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BROWSING AMONG BOOKS, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



BY 



ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON, 

AUTHOR OF "WOMAN IN AMERICAN SOCIETY. 




BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1881. 



\jt31 



Copyright, 1881, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



• 

PAGE 

Browsing among Books ] 

Cats 15 

The Humdrum Aspect of Life 31 

Smoking 42 

The Morality of Amusements 54 

Duds 68 

Boston Common on a September After- 
noon 80 

The Selection of Gifts 91 

Good-will towards Men 101 

Old-fashioned Flowers 109 

College Commencements 123 

Luxuries 135 

Small-talk one of the Fine Arts . . . 145 

Our Modern Winters 158 

Spring, as seen from a City Window . . 168 

Taking a Turkish Bath 189 

Our Minor Rights 199 

The Trials of Visiting 210 

An Evening's Adventure at the Deacon 

House 220 



BROAVSIiNG AMONG BOOKS, 



^ I ^HE gentle EJia informs us, in one of those 
essays which the world still loves to read, 
that Cousin Bridget in her youth was suffered to 
browse at will upon the fair and wholesome pas- 
turage of a good English library ; and he adds his 
belief that such an education makes most incom- 
parable old maids. When we remember how 
many authors, besides Pope, Shakspeare, and Jean 
Jacques, have thus gained their stock of learning, 
with little favor from the schools, we may add 
that desultory reading can make, also, incompara- 
ble jioets and philosophers, when genius has not 
been wanting at the start. The habit of skimming 
hastily through many volumes was one which Dr. 

Johnson acquired in early life ; and, unlike most 
1 



BROWSING JMONG BOOKS. 



of the habits to which he was a slave, he 
was able to defend it as sensible and expedient. 
Choate, our brilliant orator, delighted to linger 
for hours before an open book-stall, dipping here 
and there into the attractive pages that he found, 
all unmindful of the hurry and bustle around him. 
It appears, then, that to men of superior talents 
this browsing among books may atone, in some 
measure, for the lack of that early systematic train- 
ing which fortune has denied ; while, in their ma- 
turer years, the learned resort to it, not only for 
diversion, but that they may keep abreast with 
the passing tliought and the varied culture of their 
times. 

Tlie student is prone in early life to condemn all 
superficial reading as unworthy of a serious mind. 
In his entlmsiasm, he thinks to master the whole 
world of literature by thorough, vigorous plod- 
ding; but after much of this diligent work he 
begins to realize the hopelessness of the task. 
Could the printing-])resses be stopped for \g\\ 
years, he might retire into some happy valley to 
peruse the treasured legacies of the past, and then 



BROfrsiXG AMONG BOOKS. 



emerge^ ready to attend to the ideas of bis contem- 
poraries. But those tireless engines keep ever at 
work, and threaten to inundate him with their 
floods of science, biography, history, and art. He 
learns, at length, the necessity of gleaning the 
worth of many volumes, while ignoring the pref- 
ace and never reaching the word Finis at the 
close. A few earnest, engrossing books, however, 
will always demand his close attention; and by 
studying these his mind will be preserved from tlie 
loose habits of thought to which an excess of 
literarv browsins^ tends. 

He learns, also, that certain books are best read 
in this desultory manner ; and, in the intervals of 
continuous thought, he will smile over a paper in 
the " Spectator,^^ and laugh at an adventure of Don 
Quixote or Gil Bias. A scene from the old come- 
dies, a paragraph of Sir Thomas Browne^s delecta- 
ble English, are better than whole acts and chapters 
at a time ; and hi no other way than by fragments 
will he follow the adventures of Una and the 
Knight in Spenser^s " Faerie Queene.^^ Irving and 
Goldsmith, even, cannot delight us at long sit- 



BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 



tings; the qaiet^ musical flow of their limjjid style 
may prove captivating for moments^ but it becomes 
monotonous after an hour. 

The chief advantage of a library of the best 
authors, such as Bridget Elia knew, is the oppor- 
tunity it affords for learning something of the elder 
writers, .famous and yet forgotten, whose works 
we may not hope to explore, and which, very likely, 
we should make no effort to obtain. The worth 
of many of these great names of literature we 
have come to take on trust; and we concede 
their rank without examining tlieir credentials. 
Owing to the multitude of new claimants for its 
favor, the world is forced every year to add to 
their nuhiber. What general reader of to-day 
knows for himself that Bacon is the great and 
comprehensive philosopher, that Dryden is a master 
of magnificent prose and verse, and that Swift's 
sarcasm can burn and scorch ? Southey had 
wrought steadily at his Kehamas and Thalabas in 
vain for us, if previous generations had not left on 
record what they are like. Pope and Byron are 
fast losing their readers; and who can say how 



BROWSTNG AMONG BOOKS. 



many of the illustrious writers of the present time 
shall be sent during the next century to this limbo 
of immortal names ? They may live in cyclopsedias 
and compendiums; and their ideas will diffuse 
themselves, perhaps, into the literary atmosphere 
of tlie age ; but their works, in unworn bindings, 
must adorn the upper shelves of libraries of tlie 
classics. We become acquainted with such au- 
thors only when an hour^s leisure in their presence 
suggests to us that it might be well to dip lightly 
into their richly freighted tomes. 

There is one class of books in which we delight 
to browse, — the few that we have read with cor- 
dial sympathy and can never give up. We all 
keep near us a choice company of such favorites, 
and turn to them in idle moments for brief snatches 
of enjoyment. The familiar characters that move 
and speak between their well-worn covers, the 
scenes pictured there, the thoughts spoken, make 
for us a hidden world of enchantment, into which 
we gladly escape when our own surroundings be- 
come dull or perplexing. These volumes are 
shabby with age and merciless wear, their leaves 



BROJrsiNCr AMONG BOOKS. 



are strewn with pressed violets and bits of faded 
ribbon^ their margins are pencil-marked, and the 
last pages of the novels are scarred with traces of 
sentimental tears; but thej wear for our eyes un- 
fading charms. On taking them up, we indulge 
in a childish fancy and open at hazard, thinking 
to meet some passage appropriate to our mood ; 
and w^e are startled, now and then, into a thrill of 
pleasure at our success ; but oftener we dip here 
and there in search of any forgotten lines that may 
come to us as fresh as on their first perusal. 

These favorites of the mind are likely to be as 
undeserving as those of royal courts; they may 
lack the sanction of the wise, they may be ridicu- 
lous good-for-nothings ; but it is enough for us 
that they suit us. If we have stumbled upon them 
in the by-ways of our reading, we prize them tlie 
more because few have understood them; if the 
world has long proclaimed tliem great, we have 
been surprised to find that what impressed the 
common heart had any peculiar message for our 
own. Thus the kings and the outcasts of litera- 
ture may stand side by side in that little company 
which every reader cherishes as special friends. 



BROIVSTNG J3WNG BOOKS. 



Perhaps it is Bettine who speaks to us in our 
leisure liour, delighting by the piquant freshness 
of her descriptions and the charm of her wayward 
thought. She is always the bright, vivacious 
child, in character if not in years ; seeing straight 
to the heart of things, loving nature and copying 
her beauties, prattling of great mysteries, and re- 
vealing the depths of her own innermost soul. 
We may allow that she wanders into rhapsodies 
which no mortal can comprehend, and translates 
them for us into the drollest German-English ; but 
nothing hinders us from skipping the one and 
laughing at the other. Sprinkled among sucli 
extravagances, we find pictures of her life that 
transport us to the little town and the famous 
people among whom she dwelt; and it is of these 
that we never tire. We float with her upon the 
brimming Ehine; she leads us to the ruined chai^el 
on the height; through the silent forest; into the 
convent garden, when the moon is high; we sit 
with her at the feet of Frau Rath, to talk of her 
son Goethe; and, when the post-horn blows, the 
proud Frankfort dame relates the story of her 



BROrrSING JJIONG BOOKS. 



girlish love for the Emperor ; and we listen till we 
catch the great enthusiasm kindling in her eyes. 
YeSj wayward, gifted, little letter-writer, it is true 
that the critics do not love you overmuch; but 
you have woven for the world a tapestry of bright 
images and graceful fancies that will never fade. 

The novels to which we return, after the first 
interest is gone, are seldom those built upon plot 
alone; urdess, with an artistes eye, we desire to 
trace calmly the steps over which we have been 
hurried blindly to tlie (Unoiieinent. Perhaps, of 
modern English story-tellers, Wilkie Collins is the 
one who relies most entirely upon mechanism for 
liis effects; and no one cares to read him the sec- 
ond time. His novels have become void of attrac- 
tion when the last page is reached. "Jaiie Eyre" 
is sufficiently intense and exciting in the develop- 
ment of its 2:)lot ; but probably no work of fiction 
is more often perused in this irregular manner, 
after every incident has become familiar, and when 
a dark, inscrutable mystery no longer lures us 
breathless to the close. Each paragraph is a 
picture, finished in the clearest, softest hues ; and. 



BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 



glance where we will, we are entranced by the 
vivid coloring before us. It is a book to browse 
over on winter evenings, when we listen beside a 
glowing grate to hear tlie wind rattling against 
the pane. At such times we shiver with the little 
orphan as she walks among the shrubbery, along 
the frozen paths ; we watch the gay party of dis- 
dainful ladies at Thornfield Hall sweeping down 
into the drawing-room between swaying curtains, 
while Jane and her hapj)y charge await them, 
trembling, in the corner ; or we wander with the 
homeless governess, hungry and footsore, over the 
lonely moor. These descriptions afford perennial 
delight; for a skilful artist chose each graphic 
Avord, and set in place the contrasting scenes ; 
while in every line glows the undying fire of in- 
dividuality and genius. 

Nor can Ave abandon George Eliot's novels after 
one hurried perusal. The crowded canvas which 
slie spreads before us may reveal many common- 
place and ungainly figures, with only here and 
there a noble being gliding amid the throng; 
but the homely personages stand out so real and 



10 BROWSING J MONO BOOKS. 

solid in their prosaic vulgarity, that, like a rare 
Dutch painting, they tempt our eyes from the 
dainty, shadowy portraiture of less faithful lim- 
ners. No single oddity of look, manner, or 
phrase, however amusing, has tempted her to per- 
sonify a quality into a character, as it tempted 
Dickens to do; but every creature of her make 
shows a rounded, composite nature, like that of 
the flesh-and-blood people about us. The sombre 
garbs and dull environments of her characters find 
relief against a background of sunny landscape and 
breezy sky ; and into their rustic speech she drops 
the sly humor of the philosophic observer and tlie 
reflective wisdom of the sage. 

We might wish she had more mercy on our 
race, and were content to idealize a little tlie ma- 
terial she finds to copy ; for, in her severe truth- 
fulness, she preaches the saddest of all truths, — 
that the noble aspiration of youth, winging its way 
bravely towards the skies, is always beaten back to 
earth at last, and must inevitably succumb to the 
honest stupidity and sordid self-interest of the con- 
ventional life among which it dwells. But, though 



BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 11 

defeated, it is never false to itself; and the soul 
from wliicli it sprung still proffers it a shrine, and 
reverences in secret the indwelling presence which 
others have despised. 

So it is, that to her panoramic vieAV of human 
existence, with all its weighty problems and sorry 
actors, wherein Philanthropy and Originality fight 
single-handed against the trained cohorts of the 
Philistines, and go down before their conquerors, 
we turn again and again for repeated glimpses, 
only to come away heavy-hearted, and with a fresh 
grievance against Pate. 

At the opening of spring, if doomed to the dusty 
bricks of city streets, wliile our whole soul longs 
to be where we can see the catkins feathering the 
willow twigs and hear the loosened brooks rush- 
ing under the alders, Ave find our solace for cap- 
tivity in the writings of some simple and loyal 
lover of nature. Then it is that the " Complete 
Angler '' delights us anew. Its pages prove to be 
still redolent of the freshness of those fine May 
mornings, when the sun shone so brightly that the 
gentle linen-draper was fain to close his little 



12 BROWSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

sliop^ and to start off, with rod over his shoulder, 
toward the meadows and brooks that he loved so 
w^ell. We are pleased to listen to his discourse,, as 
he baits his curious hook and prepares to swing it 
over the rushes; we feel the drops of the smoking 
shower that send him hurrying to the willow- 
tree ; and, when the cloud rolls away, it is a bonny 
milkmaid that sings for us the shepherd^s pas- 
toral, and a sweet drauglit of milk that her mother 
hands us at its close. The fields and the brooks 
that we sigh for are blooming and purling in the 
pages that Izaak Walton went home to write. 

Or we turn to the records left by another lover 
of nature, who preferred the forest to the meadow, 
and who, though he loved men and culture less, 
loved frogs and fishes more ; for it was not in the 
lieart of Thoreau to drop a line into his woodland 
streams, much less to put a living frog upon his 
hook "as though he loved \\\mJ' From his hut by 
Walden Pond we watch the flight of lonely birds, 
the lapping of water upon the sand, the battle of 
ants in the door-yard; or we journey off beside him 
to note the expected opening of a flower and the 



BROWNING AMONG BOOKS. 13 

glory of certain lordly trees. It is a savage 
wildness that he reveals to us^ undreamed of by 
the London shopkeeper; but delineated with the 
same trutJi and sympathetic love whicli have 
created anew, for so many generations of readers, 
those sunny, showery mornings upon the banks of 
the Dove. Chaucer, also, can give us the breath 
and glad radiance of May ; and perhaps the poets 
know best what words are like the tender beauties 
of the spring. 

A contrast with our own surroundings makes 
such books most welcome. \Yearing out our days 
in the quiet of country life, we should doubtless 
prefer pictures of the life and adventure of cities ; 
and Pepys would then spread for us his photo- 
graphic pages, where we might behold gay lords 
and ladies loitering upon palace steps, playing idly 
with hats and feathers, while they awaited the 
coming of the merry monarch who was to lead 
their cavalcade. 

As we grow older, our browsing is limited to a 
smaller field. Two or three of the greatest works 
become our companions ; and the reading of pre- 



14 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

vious years seems only to have taught us how to 
value these. Unfortunate is the man who has not 
learned in youth to find in some such cherished 
volumes a world of calm^ enduring pleasure^ to 
cheer and occupy his age. 



CATS. 



iT^ATS are not historic. Other animals, bv 
noble qualities and serviceable deeds, have 
won for themselves a place in the chronicles of man- 
kind : we read of the wolf that suckled the twin 
princes of Eome ; of the warning geese that cac- 
kled before her gates ; and connect, in our memory, 
the battles of Alexander as much with the horse 
Bucephalus as with the great hero himself. But 
though cats have so long been associated with our 
domestic life, no individual member of the race 
seems ever to have figured in any important event. 
The story of Dick Whittington and his cat forms 
a part of nursery legends ; but the mythical Lord 
Mayor, and his still more mythical companion, can 
hardly be ranked among the dignities of history. 



16 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

One nation, it is true, has paid to these crea- 
tures extraordinary honors. It seems to us vastly 
amusing that the Egyptians should have built tem- 
ples to their cats, even worshipping them above all 
other animals ; forbidding them to be killed on pain 
of death, and commanding a whole household to 
shave their eyebrows when an old tabby among them 
chanced to die from the infirmities of age. Life 
has gone hard with their descendants since the days 
of the Pharaohs ; and if the lank, persecuted 
wretches wlio skulk across our city yards preserve 
among themselves any tradition of that happy 
past, they must sigh oftentimes for their paradise 
u])on the banks of the Nile, Avhere kittens were 
never drowned, and small boys never shied stones 
after their flying feet, and where fresh milk and 
warm cushions were always awaiting them at the 
Grand Vizier^s expense. 

In times when people dared to be superstitious, 
it was never doubted that there was something un- 
canny about a cat, that she loved evil, and was one 
of his Satanic Majesty^s most trusty servants. For 
some strange . power it must be that enabled her 



CATS. 17 



always to come down upon her feet, tlioiigli tossed 
never so liighj and to emit sparks of fire from her 
fur when rubbed in frosty weather. It was ever 
convenient to attribute things to the devil which 
one did not understand. She was accordingly the 
familiar of witches ; and we find the weird sisters 
in "Macbeth" responding to a call from Gray- 
malkin. AVhen entirely black, she was herself a 
witch ; and woe to the liouse where this ominous 
creature appeared. 

The belief that she possesses nine lives would 
seem to have some foundation in fact ; there is 
proof positive that death is only a temporary in- 
convenience to the feline race, from w^hich they 
soon recover. A gentleman, for whose veracity 
we will vouch, desiring to rid himself of a cat and 
her family of kittens, plunged them into a pond 
and left them to perish. Not wishing to deprive 
them of the rites of sepulture, he afterwards re- 
moved their lifeless bodies, and gave them de- 
cent burial in an adjoining field. But, on passing 
the spot the following morning, his astonished eyes 
beheld motlier Puss above ground, in apparent 
2 



18 BROWSING A 31 ON G BOOKS. 

possession of all her faculties,, and busily at work 
digging up her departed kittens. Of the depth of 
the interment we are not informed ; it was prob- 
ably slight j perhaps consisted only of a few hand- 
fuls of earth sprinkled over them, such as Horace 
makes the shade of Archytas beg the traveller to 
scatter over his unburied remains, 

Hcebit 
Inject ter pulcere curras ; 

but their speedy resurrection from drowning and 
the grave prove that two, at least, of the nine lives 
are no fable. 

Cats have been held to be the fitting compan- 
ions of old maids ; and solitary females are sup- 
posed to garnish their chimney-corners with one of 
these animals, as a melancholy solace in their dis- 
mal lot. But domiciles of this character are sel- 
dom seen now-a-days; and despite the fact that a 
moribund spinster did indeed leave a legacy, a few 
years ago, to maintain a surviving tabby, and that 
the seven wives of St. Ives, as everybody knows, 
were once met travelling, each with several hundred 
specimens of the race in her seven sacks, we declare 



CATS. 19 

our belief that women in general have no liking for 
cats, and only submit to their presence as the least 
of two evils, of which mice are the greater. Mrs. 
Barbauld, it is true, hidited a wise letter of advice 
from ^^ Grimalkin to Selima ; " and among Joanna 
Baillie^s poems is found a description of the play- 
ful gambols of the kitten, which is a rare piece of 
faithful writing ; but these are rather close studies 
in natural history, than expressions of affectionate 
regard. And biographies of Avomen show us that 
the true-hearted honesty and generous devotion of 
the dog obtain much readier appreciation in the 
female heart. We remember how Mary Mitford 
doted over her father^s old j^ointers and greyhounds, 
how much Emily Bronte endured from her favor- 
ite mastiff, Keeper, and how lovingly Elizabeth 
Browning has sung the praises of Elush, her 
dog. 

It is among men that cats find their warmest 
admirers ; and they are generally men of culture 
and of a solitarv life. The lithe ffrace of move- 
ment, and soft, purring ways of these household 
pets, their love of luxurious living, and even the 



20 BROWSIXG JUIOXG BOOKS. 

■winning treachery of their actions^ seem to atone, 
in some measure, for the loss of the society of 
ladies, of whose qualities they are, perhaps, the 
reminders. From his grim bachelor quarters at 
Cambridge, Gray wrote one of the few tributes to 
their beauty to be found in our polite and classic 
literature ; and his " Lines on a favorite cat 
drowned in a tub of gold-fishes '' are in a tone of 
gallant, playful satire, quite unusual with him. In 
that strange little household in Bolt Court, which 
good old Dr. Johnson was pleased to call his own, 
we remember the cat Hodge as a most important 
member, and certainly the one dearest to his mas- 
ter's heart ; and Newton, the prince of natural 
philosophers, must have possessed a couple of these 
animals, and have taken pains for their accommo- 
dation ; for is he not accused of cutting one large 
hole in his door for the cat and a smaller one for 
the kitten ? 

This fancy for the feline race prevails among lesser 
men. A reverend gentleman of our acquaintance 
has collected a large number of their photographs, 
and delights in them as he would in a gallery of 



CATS. 21 

court beauties; another finds no subject of con- 
versation so engaging as the pranks and peculiari- 
ties of his six gray mousers at home ; and a third 
confesses to listening at night to the fitful cater- 
wauling under his whidow as he would listen to a 
nightingale. About twenty years ago there re- 
sided in Boston a Frenchman by the name of 
Malignon, a gentleman of scholarly tastes^ and suc- 
cessful as a teacher of his native tongue. Some of 
our readers will remember the family of cats, vary- 
ing from four to nine in number, which shared his 
bachelor lodgings, and were trained by him to the 
strictest obedience. They answered to their several 
names ; and at meal-times they sat at a table of 
their own, each in her own chair, with an alloAv- 
ance of meat placed ready on the plate before her. 
This was never to be touched without permission 
from the master; and the expressions on their 
whiskered faces, as they eagerly watched for his 
signal to beghi, can never be forgotten by those 
who saw the droll assemblage at dinner. He was 
proud to exhibit his proteffees to curious visitors ; 
and when a rise in copper stocks endowed him at 



22 BROWSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

length with a fortune^ and sent him home to enjoy 
it among his friends, he took his favorites with him, 
we may be sure, to confer upon them the benefits 
of the best Parisian training. 

To any one who carefully observes the peculiar 
traits of their nature, cats present many strange 
contradictions. We think of them, first, as dainty 
Sybarites, loving their ease above all things, and 
finding it only where material comforts and domes- 
tic quiet abound. In cushioned arm-chairs or 
upon warm hearth-rugs they doze away their 
days, blinking out through half-shut eyes upon 
the well-ordered surroundings, with a look of 
measureless content, and expressing their rapture 
in that purring noise which we have come to re- 
gard as the very language of satisfaction, too 
happy and too indolent to think. 

Yet under this delicate living, this soft, sleepy 
existence in cosey parlors, there lurks an irreclaim- 
able fierceness, which allies them directly with the 
untamed denizens of the forest. White, of Sel- 
bourne, keen as he is in observation and temper- 
ate in language, refers to the house cat as a 



CAT3. 23 

" cruel and saiiguiiiarj beast ; '' and his epithets 
fitlv characterize her kitli and kin. Althousrh 
naturalists tell us that they can never have been 
wild, we do not doubt that they are own cousins 
to the tiger ; and their green, slitted eyes, when 
lit np in anger with scintillating gleams, seem 
made to glare out from thickets and jungles 
upon unwary, defenceless creatures. Their light, 
stealthy tread and quickness of spring, their 
fondness for strategy, and unwearying patience, 
are family traits of all beasts of prey. If by day 
they succumb to the charms of civilization, dark- 
ness arouses them to the savage delights of a free 
and barbarous life. The shining hours may be 
given to silent, luxurious siestas; but niglit is 
Gacred to predatory warfare and heroic serenades. 
In the still moonlight, while beasts and birds and 
men are, for the most part, sunk in slumber, they 
betake themselves to wild marauding over vine- 
trellises and along outlying fences, caterwauling 
under the stars, and making night hideous with 
their sonorous variations upon the five vowels of 
our speech. Sometimes we are privileged to 



24 BBOWSTNG AMONG BOOKS. 

behold dimly a couple of these champions as they 
stand, with long-drawn, defiant notes, preparing 
for the fray, swinging their tails slowly from side 
to side with an intensity of repressed rage, and 
flashing their eyes at the confronting foe, till one 
smothered crescendo explodes in sudden hissing 
and snarling and a sound of collision, followed by 
ominous silence. Next morning they ap])ear 
beside the breakfast-table, waiting as meekly for 
their saucer of milk as if they had just risen from 
long and innocent dreams; and stretching their 
claws languidly upon the carpet, to imply that tlie 
velvet paws that cover tliem have known no 
rougher exercise than creeping in and out among 
the dishes of the china closet. And though they 
wear the scars of honorable warfare upon their 
fronts, they never parade them to human eyes ; 
for these contests with the swaggerers and bullies 
of their race appear to them too sacred to be 
hinted at to unsympathizing man. 

This wonderful mixture of the Sybarite and the 
savage seems inherent to their character; and yet 
we see in the kitten no trace of any but endearing 



CATS. 25 

qualities. With her endless devices for killing 
time and beguiling solitude, her graceful frolics 
and bewitching mischief, she is the most charming 
creature in existence. No dreams of rats and 
mice, midnight prowls and harassing dogs, dis- 
turb the saucy serenity of her mind. The staid 
mamma, coiled stupidly beside the fire, bears no 
resemblance to the restless little madcap who finds 
such bewildering fun in chasing her tail and in 
twitching at the curtain tassels, and who only 
employs the rare strategic qualities she possesses in 
pouncing upon the floating sliadow of a vine leaf 
from an ambush of garden rose-bushes. 

But the most positive hates and likings will soon 
begin to assert themselves. If cats inherit, for their 
aesthetic tastes, a fondness for quiet, warmth, and 
soft cushions, their material loves are fisli, birds, 
and catnip. In giving them an appetite for what- 
ever swims the briny deep, nature seems to have 
perpetrated upon them a sly joke ; for their inveter- 
ate aversion to that element prevents them from 
obtaining a single fish for themselves. Unluckily, 
they are more successful in their quest for birds ; 



.26 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

and though they are not to blame for regarding 
the little songsters on the summer boughs as only 
so many possible breakfasts, we find it hard to 
forgive the sly-faced old grimalkin who comes 
stalking up from the garden shrubbery with the 
approving unction of a saint_, while a bereft mother 
in the tree-top sends out her despairing cry. Pish 
and birds may be to them delicious eating, but 
their joy in devouring catnip is something hilari- 
ous. The most demure and respectable tabby 
will tumble about in the fragrant weed in uncon- 
trollable ecstasy, not only her eyes but her whole 
body rolling in a fine frenzy, showing plainly that 
its influence has mounted to her brain, and that 
she is half-seas-over in drunken joy. It is the 
elixir of the gods to her, as fairly intoxicating as 
wine or hashish to mortal man. 

While cats reserve their strongest aversions for 
rats, dogs, and water, they show little liking for 
their human companions and protectors. The 
greyhound may regard his master with devoted 
love, but the cat looks upon hers in no such senti- 
mental light. She understands that one bond 



CATS. 27 

alone unites them, and that is the hatred of mice 
common to both. From him slie accepts the 
luxuries of a home^ and she rids his cellar of 
vermin in return; and the accounts are square. 
Whether petted or persecuted, the favorite of the 
jiarlor or the target of roving boys, her race dis- 
trust all those about tliem, and are willing to be 
distrusted in turn. The Ishmaelites of our city 
alleys, they reveal by their sneaking run across 
streets and open lots that their estimate of average 
human nature is no better than it deserves. 

The cat forms strong attachments, but they are 
to places, not people. She cares not who inhabits 
the domain, so be it she is left free to roam over 
her accustomed haunts. If she is removed with 
the family to a new residence, she quickly finds 
her way back to the old home, through unfamiliar 
scenes. 

We cannot claim for her any great capacity for 
mental improvement. There have been learned 
dogs, and learned pigs even, but never a learned 
cat. Very few of them can be trained to any feat; 
though we do not forget the Maltese giant who 



28 BROJFSTNG J3fONG BOOKS. 

prides himself on opening a door_, or the other 
giant at the apothecary's shop, who sits upon the 
counter ready to bite off the string when the bun- 
dles are tied. If we point at anything, the cat 
remains looking stupidly at our finger ; and in the 
fable, it is her paw that is burnt in raking out 
the chestnuts for another. On entering a strange 
house, or attacking a dangerous foe, she displays 
some forethought by providing for a masterly re- 
treat ; but this is almost her only wisdom. 

Much is said about her cleanliness; and the per- 
sistent washing of face and snowy breast with her 
moistened paw does indeed show proper regard 
for a seemly exterior. When we consider, how- 
ever, that the mouth which furnishes the moist- 
ure must also take to itself whatever is re- 
moved, this mode of ablation does not recommend 
itself to our sense of neatness, however necessary 
she may find it from her unconquerable dislike of 
water. 

But when disposed to condemn some of the hab- 
its and propensities of these household companions, 
we must reflect that we judge them by a human 



CJTS. 29 

standard, and allow no virtues but those that suit 
our prejudices and interest. Were we to write an 
epitaph for any paragon among them, it would 
read something like this : " She was a good 
mouser, lived at peace with the dog, and ate what- 
ever was set before her/^ Tried by the code of 
ethics that prevails in the feline world, she might 
be adjudged as utterly wanting in the qualities of 
a saint. 

The cats we have loved have been few, and 
their histories eventful ; but space would fail us to 
immortalize them here. We can only hope that 
they wander now along the interminable fences 
that bound the Elysian fields, or steal through the 
dark caverns of Hades disturbed by no sounds of 
squealing rats or ramping mice. But one brief 
tribute shall be paid to thee, O matchless Thomas, 
who still roamest through the Florentine alley 
by moonlight, betwixt the shadows of towering 
houses, and by day reclinest, like a young pan- 
ther, asleep upon the cushions of my lady^s lounge. 
It is with superb condescension, as becomes his 
reo'al beautv, that he rises to salute us, and to 



30 BROJFSING AMONG BOOKS. 

make us welcome beside liim ; for well he knows 
that the beloved mistress can come no more to 
greet us, and that we two must be friends for her 
dear sake. 



THE HUMDRUM ASPECT OF LIFE. 



ry^HEEE are moods of feeling common to us all 
when we tire of seeing the sun rise so persist- 
ently in the east, and when Ave fancy that if he 
were to sail up some fine morning from the oppo- 
site quarter of the sky, a new cliarm would be 
given to existence. System and regularity, which 
underlie all developments of nature and of life, 
appear to us then merely grand names for dulness 
and routine. AVe cannot but admire tlie serene 
certainty with which planets return upon their 
orbits, for only the nice balancing of forces 
which this implies can keep the universe from dash- 
ing itself to atoms ; but it is refreshing, neverthe- 
less, to find a few blazing comets — those rowdies 
of the skies, as somebody calls them — careering 



32 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

across these concentric circles with a wild, erratic 
sweep, which seems to set all laws at defiance. 
Earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic outbursts, become 
welcome assurances that the elements are able to 
break from their leash, and that exceptions and 
extravagances are yet possible in the earth and the 
heavens. Fixed constellations that lighted Chal- 
dean shepherds in their midnight watches shine 
over us unlieeded ; but we follow with eager gaze 
the downward plunge of a shooting-star, careless 
whether it may be a mere trail of flaming gases, 
or a solid world spinning fast to destruction. 

In such moods, the necessary duties of every- 
day life confer upon it an aspect of hopeless, un- 
varying routine. Trifling labors oppress us with 
their steady recurrence, and absorb the best of our 
golden hours. We long for something hazardous 
and unexpected; peril, heart-throbs, intensity of 
emotion, are better than tlie torpidity, the hum- 
drum, sordid cares to which society dooms us 
when it offers protection and safety. We contem- 
plate with dismay the inevitable rising at morning 
and lying down at night, the three regular meals 



THE HVMDRUM ASPECT OF LIFE. 33 

between, the thousand and one simple labors which 
make our civilized, comfortable existence little 
better than an insupportable bore. When the 
friends of that quaint pliysician and poet. Sir Sam- 
uel Garth, told him he was dying, he replied that 
he was glad to know it, for he was tired of pull- 
ing off his shoes. Forty-nine years had seemed 
to him full long enough to endure the even tenor 
of such petty, prosaic acts. The glorious possi- 
bilities and infinite scope of life are lost in these 
small repetitions that support it; as the immortal 
Iliad has been described to be only a compound of 
twenty-four alphabetical letters. 

Not only do events appear flat and stale, but 
the people who surround us fail, at such times, to 
interest or please. Everybody is everybody's copy; 
our friends themselves seem hardly worth the time 
it takes to know them. Amid such stupid uni- 
formity we ^wonder where novelists find their eccen- 
tric and peculiar personages. While we read, the 
characters strike us as life-like and natural; yet 
we see nowhere their prototypes. 

As we grow older, life wears more and more 



34 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

this humdrum, forbidding aspect. When the 
animal spirits and the eager hope that once buoved 
us uj) have departed, and no wide resources of 
thought or enhirged human sympathies have taken 
their place, we behold around us nothing save a 
sterile and familiar waste. In childhood we know 
little of limitations or probabilities ; the beings of 
'fable and the scenes of romance entwine themselves 
with all our fresh realities. Fairyland is as easy 
to step into as the next field ; and if we sliould 
meet there Oberon and Titania, they would hardly 
be worth a stare. In every bean there lies the 
germ of just such a mighty stalk as that which 
Jack planted by liis mother^s cottage door ; on 
any dull morning another ravenous giant may 
come striding along and snap us up in a twink- 
ling, if we are not spry enough to elude him. In 
the forest stream our youthful fancy discerns the 
flutter of Undine's white robe; passing adown 
leafy aisles, we catch, like Emerson, a glimpse of 
vanishing dryads ; and upon the far horizon of 
level waves we behold the vast length of the sea- 
serpent tumbling in the heaving brine. The cer- 



THE HUMDRUM ASPECT OF LIFE. 35 

tainty of knowledge that comes to dispel this 
world of illusions is no welcome disenchanter. 
Dim, hazy forms were fairer to our eyes than the 
sharp contours that stand out so boldly in cold, 
clear light. We have stepped behind the stage in 
lifers great wonder-scenes, and behold the creak- 
ing machinery, the worn, besmeared canvas, the 
hempen strings by wdiich the gay puppets perform 
their dexterous tricks ; but we wish ever after that 
we could have remained before the curtain in open- 
mouthed amazement to the end of the play. 

And not only are individuals forced to surren- 
der their cherished fables, but the world in gen- 
eral is losing, one by one, its dear, time-honored 
wonders and prodigies. Merciless historians 
threaten to leave no longer marvellous deeds, re- 
morseless ruffians or unblemished saints. Heroic 
beatitudes and infamous villanies are reduced by 
them to the dead level of average human nature. 
Long ago they convinced us that a wolf never 
suckled the twin princes of Rome; now we are 
assured that William Tell was by no means the 
shot w'e have supposed him to be, and that Poca- 



36 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

houtas had little thought of sacrificing herself in 
romantic fashion for a captive lover. Mr. Froude 
claims that bluff King Hal was not so precious a 
rascal as he might have been^, despite his murdered 
Avives j and even the traitor Judas finds plausible 
defenders in these modern days. So our familiar 
images go tumbling from their pedestals ; and we 
fear tliat nothing will be left us either to admire 
or despise in a round and wholesome style. 

While deploring a lack of attractive interest in 
the objects about us, we fondly believe that in dis- 
tant scenes life still wears the old freshness and 
glory. Americans fancy that existence is nowhere so 
cold and unsuggestive as in the midst of new com- 
mercial cities and among rough fields and forests. 
If nightingales only warbled from our moonlit 
trees, and larks sank carolling into these AVestern 
skies, if ruins frowned upon us from beetling clifl's, 
and legends were written on crumbling stones, our 
poets might find themes worthy of immortal verse ; 
and yet the world cares only for their strains when 
they reflect the novel grandeur of scenery, and the 
new, large life of the place in which they dwell. 



THE HUMDRUM ASPECT OF LIFE. 37 

Our artists cross the ocean that they may sit 
down before the sculptured marbles of other lands, 
and study them for years ; and then one of them 
discovers, in the matchless beauty of the A230II0 
he has gone so far to copy, the very poise and 
proud, defiant grace of an Indian warrior, when 
he stands watching the arrow strike among the 
distant herd. Our most gifted novelist lamented 
the narrow bounds and the blank, colorless life of 
a New England home ; but the pnpers of a Yankee 
custom-house furnished to him material for a 
marvellous romance, beside which his transcript of 
Italian skies and storied fable appears weak and 
powerless. Our girls fly to Paris, as to an earthly 
paradise, and are eager to exchange fortune and 
happiness for the empty title which can never be 
offered them at home, and which their republican 
countrywomen were once taught to despise; our 
young men regard European travel and a course 
at a German university as the two things needful 
to complete their perfection. Yet to the land that 
they leave, and of whose institutions they are so 
ignorant, a De Tocqueville came, to study laws 



38 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

and customs that seemed to him of surpassing 
interest; and it is still from his foreign pages that 
we learn the spirit and the distinctive features of 
our public life. The sons of royal princes have 
hurried here to learn the art of war ; other gov- 
ernments send to us special commissioners to 
inquire into our sanitary commissions and our 
public schools. Yet these subjects^ and all the 
wonders with which nature has surrounded us_, — 
the vast lakes and rivers, the mighty cataracts, 
the rolling prairies and untrodden wilderness, the 
remnants of Indian tribes and the stirring scenes 
of frontier life, — appear unworthy our thoughts, 
until we are asked concerning them on the shores 
of a Swiss lake, or in the streets of a Prussian 
town. We begin then to suspect that the sur- 
roundings which appeared to us trite and common- 
place had a meaning and an interest which our 
minds were too shallow to discern. 

In these latter days we have become so thor- 
oughly possessed by the notion that no surprises 
are possible, that we accept any, when offered, with 
sceptical disdain. Believing that we had ran- 



THE HUMDRUM ASPECT OF LIFE. 39 

sacked tlie natural world, we looked upon the 
gorilla as an impostor; and only after severe scru- 
tiny of his credentials did we admit him as a new 
member of the animal kingdom. To the past we 
still look for remarkable careers and striking inci- 
dents ; yet no age surpasses ours in stirring, 
picturesque deeds. Side by side with the most 
illustrious of its predecessors, this century will 
show the lack of no grand, significant events, 
no romantic splendors, no vivid coloring for the 
page of either historian or poet ; while in munifi- 
cent bequests of private individuals for furthering 
the public welfare, in wide-spread intelligence, no 
less than in knowledge and control of material 
forces, and in daring incursions into the hidden 
realms of nature, it puts the achievements of all 
other centuries to shame. 

This daily life of ours, which so often appears 
humdrum and repulsive, would be rich in interest 
and promise if we knew how to view it aright. It 
is only the dull vision, the untrained intelligence, 
that lead us to weary of the present and to ques- 
tion hopelessly the future. A superficial mind 



40 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

returns from its journeyings feeling that it has 
exhausted the world, and wears ever after the 
despondent air of one to whom there can be noth- 
ing new under the sun ; a Humboldt finds the 
longest span of human life all too short for his 
tireless explorations and the great lessons which 
they teach to his attentive ear. Tlie more we 
examine what is around and beneath us, the 
more we find to arrest our thought. A quiet 
country town, from which probably nearly every 
inhabitant would have been glad to escape, for a 
while, to more diverting scenes, could so charm 
and occupy Thoreau, that he scorned the offer made 
him to visit the strange regions of remote Brazil. 
The keen glance that could detect the tropics in 
our Northern meadows had no reason to roam 
over the earth in search of marvels. And amid 
environments that seemed monotonous to less 
observant eyes, Jane Austen and Mary Mitford 
found abundant material for that variety of human 
character, of scenery and incident, that still attracts 
us to their animated pages. 

It is not the poverty of life without, but of 



THE HUMDRUM ASPECT OF LIFE. 41 

life within^ that cramps and oppresses. Edu- 
cation alone confers the charm that clothes every- 
thing with radiance, and makes the wilderness of 
common scenes to blossom as the rose. External 
change and excitement can furnish us, at best, but 
poor entertainment and shallow delights. Go 
wherever we will, we carry with us ourselves ; and 
upon our own inner resources we must everywhere 
chiefly depend. If they be rich and varied, no 
outward surroundings can ever seem valueless 
and dull ; we shall then find food for speculation 
where empty minds would stagnate in a sluggish 
discontent. 



SMOKING. 



TF only for the sake of novelty, we should be 
glad to begin a pleasant bit of complimentary 
prose in behalf of this favorite, much-belabored 
pastime. It is so certain at the present day tliat 
any one who discourses at all on the theme has 
his own little preachment to deliver, and his own 
mode of demonstrating that it does not pay to 
smoke, that an attempt to answer these repeated 
assaults would be hailed with grateful surprise by 
a smoking world. We remember how surely each 
year Charles Sprague's "Ode to a Cigar '^ is revived 
and reprinted, and how fondly it has endeared him 
to a thousand hearts. Byron indited some warmly 
appreciative lines in praise of the weed; and its 
devotees, in consequence, are ready to absolve 



S3I0KING. 43 



liim from a score of flagrant sins. And with what 
sweet, dreamy memories we recall Ik Marvel's 
'' Reveries of a Bachelor/' — a book over which 
young people hung entranced in our school-days 
and whose charming fancies were woven of no 
tissues more substantial than the smoke-wreaths 
curling up from a lighted Havana. 

That was indeed a sensible trio, our generation 
would say, with some tenderness for the diver- 
sions of mankind; but the literature of to-day 
furnishes no disciples of their faith. Bacchanalian 
stanzas in praise of the flowing bowl are not more 
obsolete in the writing of modern bards than are 
laudatory references to the pipe and the cigar. 
Smoking has come to be hopelessly classed among 
the petty sins about which noisy, would-be re- 
formers make such ado; and though, from the 
chief magnates of our nation to the humblest 
ditch-digger in the fields, it is more than ever 
cherished as the dearest solace of life, its votaries 
utter no word in its defence, and do not seem of 
the class that write for the magazines. They are 
either too much engrossed in the labor of converting 



44 BROirSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

tobacco into ashes and smoke^ or too much stuhi- 
fied by the process, to put in an appearance in 
print; so the relentless quill-drivers have it all 
their own way. The smoke from a million up- 
turned mouths ascends steadily to heaven from 
our homes of ease and culture ; but tlirough it 
their inmates read scathing tirades and sarcastic 
flings against their beloved pastime without winc- 
ing. They will even declare the last attack to be 
an uncommonly flue thhig, as they rise to refill 
their well-colored meerschaums. Every whifF, say 
tliey, dropping back into deep lounging-chairs, 
may be wafting us straight on to destruction ; but 
at least it is the art of suicide made easy and 
agreeable. 

Though we cannot, with conscience, enter upon 
any defence of smoking, we can allow it to be the 
most becoming of sins. The smoker^s attitude, 
when lost in devotion to his cigar, is always one 
of easy, listless grace; the thin, enwreathing 
clouds that float before him give softness to his 
face and dreaminess to his eye ; the gay colorings 
in his attire, which custom allows him only then. 



SMOKING. 45 



supply warm tints for the picture^ and seem to 
transfer a little of the si^lendor and indolence of 
the Orient into Western drawing-rooms. A fear 
of lingering fumes in the parlor curtains would 
prevent most housekeepers from looking at the 
scene in its purely artistic bearings ; but we are not 
of the number. The fragrance of a good cigar, 
at some reasonable distance, is as grateful to our 
sense as sacrifice is supposed to be to a heathen 
god ; and this we avow, in order that no woman's 
abhorrence of an aroma may be supposed to un- 
derlie any opinions we shall express. Moreover, 
tlie mere fact that smoking is associated only with 
masculine life would give it an additional beauty 
in woman's eyes, such as her own employments of 
netting and embroidery wear to the other sex. 
Jkit, in sj^ite of every grace that it may claim, we 
think we express the voice of womankind when 
we declare earnestly against it. 

The spread of this habit during the past few 
years must be evident to all; and the growing 
audacity of smokers is such as to call for a 
strong protest from women, who are the chief suf- 



46 BR01FSING AMONG BOOKS. 

ferers. Otice,, the presence of ladies was sufficient 
reason for leaving the cigar unlighted ; but now, 
in a carriage, the occupants of the back seat are 
expected to inhale fuliginous puffs from their 
escorts in front ; and on a promenade, gentlemen 
take out their cigar-cases as though a kindly 
permission were a matter of course. They may 
condescend to ask if smoking would be objection- 
able, but the tone and manner admit of but one 
reply. In street-cars the same aroma floats in 
from the platform ; and upon the crowded side- 
walk it is impossible to escape the choking fumes. 
This growing encroachment upon the domain of 
others must arise from a belief that the practice is 
not so objectionable as formerly, and that there- 
fore its indulgence is less of an insult ; but the 
belief is a delusion. 

The two objections commonly adduced against 
smoking are not such as specially affect woman. 
She knows it to be expensive, to some degree; but 
so, also, are wines, fast horses, club dinners. Ma- 
sonic lodges, and most other masculine diversions ; 
and she leaves to smokers the control of tlieir own 



SMOKING. 47 



finances. That it tends to withdraw a portion of 
her family from her companionship is certaiidy a 
serious evil, as it affects society in general ; but 
she is not disposed to deplore it for her individual 
sake. Mothers and waves are often quite as glad 
to see sons and husbands depart for the smoking 
fraternity at the club or the grocery store, as sons 
and husbands are to go. This ought not to be ; 
but. so long as the present structure of society 
gives the majority of men and women so few sym- 
pathies and interests in common, each will look 
upon the absence of the other, in ordinary life, as 
rather desirable than otherwise. 

Woman abhors smoking, then, not because it is 
expensive, or generally pernicious, but because it 
seems to her essentially useless, enslaving, and 
filthy. These are strong adjectives, but they are 
appropriate here. 

Its uselessness makes it appear ridiculous to her 
mind. AVhy is it, she asks, that men take such 
pains to acquire a habit to which instinctive tastes 
do not lead, iind which can be induced only by 
much nausea and perseverance ? We do not find 



48 BROWSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

it necessary to subject ourselves to this troublous 
experience. Can it be that life is so barren to 
men of all rational pleasures, that, without this 
habit attained, they must go walking up and down 
in vacant misery ; and that therefore they deliber- 
ately make themselves sick at the starts in order 
to enslave themselves ever after to one controlling 
appetite, to establish a steady drain upon their 
purses, and finally to disgust their friends; and 
that all this is done in cold blood, with their eyes 
wide open to the results ? If a need of narcotics 
and stimulants be a part of human nature, as some 
writers assert, it is then a part of woman's nature ; 
and yet she never suspects that she is laboring at 
a disadvantage in not spending several hours each 
day in smoking. That she can acquire the practice, 
as shown by the example of Cuban ladies, some old 
countrywomen, and a few artists like George Sand 
and Rosa Bonheur, only proves that women are 
very much like men in tastes and habits when 
they wish and dare to be so. To eat clay and to 
take snuff can becomi* feminine accomplishments 
in communities where they are encouraged. We 



SMOKING. 49 



cannot believe that the wooden individual in short 
clothes, with hooked nose and protruding chin, 
who stands beside the door of cigar-stores, leering 
seductively to passers-by as he points slyly over 
his shoulder, has any peculiar enticement for the 
masculine mind in its natural state. Such a mind 
must agree with us that the practice of smoking 
is at least entirely unnecessary, and unproductive 
of good. It does not induce simple rest, but 
semi-stupefaction ; it gives no exercise to body 
or mind ; and as a pleasure it is wholly selfish, 
since it diffuses no enjoyment to those around, and 
shuts one in from all share in the conversation and 
pursuits of others. 

Only the absurd notion that it is manly can 
ever lead boys to strive so pertinaciously to 
attain the dignity of finishuig a long nine, — in 
other words, of holding between the lips a roll of 
lighted tobacco-leaves, making a chimney of the 
mouth by drawing in the smoke at one corner 
and letting it out at the other, until the whole is 
consumed. From this influence very few seem to 
escape. Even Thoreau, the simplest and purest 



50 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

of men^ confesses that the one vice of his youth 
was smoking dried lily-stems. In his case there 
was no progression toward nobler triumphs in the 
same line ; this excess was final, and sufficed : but 
for the ordinary smoker there is a higher and 
a manlier attainment, — it is the coloring of a 
meerschaum. The leisure hours of many months 
are given by him to this profitable employment; 
and, during the process, the meerschaum is an 
object of far more tender solicitude than the state 
of his soul, the favor of the young lady he adores, 
or the tie of his best cravat. 

The enslaving power which this habit possesses 
is a second reason why woman condemns it so 
strongly. Her friends will admit its folly, its evil 
effects, but declare that they have no power to 
throw it off; or they will resolve to break it, 
and after a while creep back to it again, excusing 
it as a cure for toothache or some other fancied 
ailment, thus revealing the abject servitude which 
it has wrought. Nothing in her own life leads her 
to sympathize with this. Eesolution and self-con- 
trol have been instilled into her from her cradle. 



SMOKING. 51 



'' Because I think I cannot, therefore I will/^ 
would be the thought to animate her. ^'^I will 
own no appetite for my master/' To submit to 
such a thraldom, and to acknowledge it without 
shame, seems the strangest thing of all. 

But if there were no other consideration to preju- 
dice woman against the habit, its uncleanliness 
would suffice. She loves material purity ; more 
than half her labors are voluntary efforts to keep 
her surroundings, her house, and her clothing 
daintily sweet and clean. This practice in those 
about her not only leads to the pollution of the 
air and the defilement of floors and sidewalks, 
but, worse than this, it promises to render repul- 
sive the appearance of those she loves. She may 
suspect that inveterate smoking is gradually rob- 
bing their characters of energy and enterprise, 
blunting the keen alertness of their senses, and 
subjecting the whole being to a process of slow 
deterioration ; but she knows, every time her eye 
lights upon their features, that it is despoiling 
them of all attractive charm. Stained, yellowish 
teeth, lips brown and parched, hair, beard, and 



52 BlWirsiNG AMONG BOOKS. 

clothing steeped in stale odors disagreeable to 
approach, — these certainly are not recommenda- 
tions to the favor of one who rates cleanliness next 
to godliness. If she overlooks such results of the 
filthy habit, it is only because she knows there is 
sometliing worse. To smoke is bad enough, but 
to chew is utterly vile and disgusting. Women do 
not swear, — that privilege is reserved for gods 
and men ; but if gentlemen could hear the em- 
phatic terms in which their fair friends express 
abhorrence of the latter custom they would be 
convinced that the female vocabulary has resources 
of which they had never dreamed. 

Such opinions may not be openly avowed ; 
and, indeed, as society is now constituted, gen- 
tlemen are not likely to hear the real sentiments 
of ladies when these differ from their own. 
AVhile women are so limited in their choice of 
masculine friends, and so dependent for attentions 
upon the few they possess, they will not choose 
to tell these friends that their habits are disgust- 
ing ; and that the morality they accept and the 
tastes they indulge would adorn the characters of 



SMOKING. 53 



amiable savages, and are tolerated merely because 
sach a low range of thought and action is held 
respectable among men. This may be in their 
thoughts ; but no French philosopher was needed 
to teach them that words, for their sex, were not 
intended to express thoughts, but to conceal them. 
So we suppose the world will go on, one half its 
p3ople smoking, and the other half despising them 
for it, or, it may be, forgiving them ; but always 
considering the practice to be an offence against 
morals and manners. 



THE MORALITY OF AMUSEMENTS. 



"XT 7'HEN Macaulay asserts that the English 
Puritans detested bear-baiting, not be- 
cause it gave pain to the bears, but because it 
gave pleasure to the spectators, he stretches the 
truth a little, after his intemperate fashion, for the 
sake of brilliancy and point. It was the dev otion 
of the hated Cavaliers to licentious sports and 
immoderate merrymaking that led their opponents 
to condemn all sports and all merrymaking as 
wiles of the devil, and to declare that he alone 
could be virtuous who abjured the sound of the 
fiddle and the May-day dance upon the village 
green, and contented himself in leisure hours with 
sitting upon hard benches, in shorn locks and so- 



THE 3I0RALITY OF JJfUSEMENTS. 55 

ber garb, singing psalm-tunes lustily through his 
nose. 

This freakish austerity of our ancestors is more 
to us than a mere item of history, since these 
views prevailed when our country was settled, and 
their influence is felt in New England to the pres- 
ent day. Our earnest forefathers founded their 
new States upon many sterling virtues ; but they 
committed the grave error of ignoring altogether 
one great element of human nature, — the neces- 
sity for recreation and rest. Stern work and 
equally stern worship were to absorb and satisfy 
life ; holidays and diversions they regarded as fit 
only for children, to be encouraged by those gov- 
ernments alone wliich sought to amuse the people 
while cheating them of their birthrights. Thus, 
at the very start, all sports were discouraged on 
religious grounds ; and when, soon after, our 
greatest philosopher spread abroad his Poor-Rich- 
ard doctrines, by which the turning of an honest 
penny was taught as the first duty of his country- 
men, our national existence was wholly directed to 
serious, unflagging industries. As a consequence. 



56 BBOWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

we have become an eager^ over-ambitious people, 
pursuing business with a mad fervor, which gives 
neither time nor reHsh for the simple gajeties of 
every hour. In America we never live, but are 
always getting ready .to live; and we postpone our 
pleasures to some indefinite future when we shall 
have the means and leisure that are needed for 
their pursuit. Since the bow is always bent, we 
should not wonder if its elasticity is well-nigh gone. 
It is no longer a moral objection, however, but 
a growing love of money-making, which prevents 
us, at the present day, from indulging in the 
recreation so essential to health and spirits. Time, 
which has softened the religious asperities inherited 
from our forefathers, has softened also the unreason- 
able prejudices which they cherished ; so that we 
have ceased to regard the fine arts with fixed hos- 
tility, and to teach their avoidance as a religious 
duty. Excellence in music, painting, and sculp- 
ture we now recognize as one of the chief glories 
of a people ; and our ignorance of their principles 
and meagre collection of their beauties are la- 
mented as a national calamity. We are striving 



THE 3I0RALITY OF AMUSEMENTS. 57 

to repair the injury clone in the past by sending 
promising artists abroad for advantageous study, 
by erecting art-museums at home, and by teaching 
every child in our public schools the elements of 
drawing and of harmony ; for we see in these ac- 
complishments the agencies that can ennoble and 
purify thought, and rescue our lives from the 
dead materialism and unspiritual worldliness of 
the present. Even those churches which but 
thirty years ago held stained glass and painted 
ornaments as an abomination, and thought it a 
crime to allow musical instruments in their choirs, 
now perforate the architectural fronts of their new 
meeting-houses for gorgeous oriel windows, and 
roll out their jubilant hymns above tlie melodious 
tliunder of a mighty org in. Tlius Beauty is no 
longer stigmatized as the natural enemy of Virtue, 
but is welcomed as her powerful ally, able to do 
harm only when repulsed from her true calling, 
and driven into the service of Vice. The notion 
that goodness consists chiefly in making ourselves 
uncomfortable is fast giving way before the spread 
of intelligence and of individual thought. Active 



58 BROWSING J3WNG BOOKS. 

exertions in the cause of humanity we now hold 
to be more conducive to spiritual progress than 
stated fasts, hair shirts, and secret scourgings. 

An equally hearty recognition of the value of sim- 
ple amusements is yet to come. We may not now 
enact laws agahist kissing wives on Sunday, nor 
call starch "the deviFs own liquor^' because it 
contributes to the beautifying of clothes, nor 
christen children with a whole Scripture text, hy- 
phened into a name, but we are not wholly rid of 
Puritan absurdities. A few unco good people 
still consider dancing and novels as questionable 
diversions, at the best, and deem that they ad- 
vance the cause of virtue when they brand all 
theatres as nurseries of sin, and do their utmost to 
keep good and intelligent people away. We can 
only be thankful that such characters were not 
consulted in the making of our world; for then 
lambs would not have been suffered to gambol, 
kittens to frisk, or birds to wheel and dart in 
mid-air; but every creature would have moved 
along in a regular jog-trot style, bent only on 
the discharge of important errands. All waving 



THE MORALITY OF AMUSEMENTS. 59 

beauty and variety of foliage Avould have been 
condemned as useless : and tlie mvriads of manv- 
tinted flowers would have been dispensed wdth, as 
a wanton waste of cellular tissue and vegetable 
dyes, necessary neither for food, raiment, nor shel- 
ter. Such minds must contemplate wath dismay 
the increase of fiction-Avriting at the present time ; 
since they regard Scott, Charlotte Bronte, and 
George Eliot, not as benefactors of the race, 
raising by their magic wands scenes of enchant- 
ment to refresh the thought, but only as specious 
servants of the Father of Lies, all the more dan- 
gerous for being so attractive. Moral truth and 
beauty have been embodied in sacred parable; 
but the bigoted teachers of these latter days will 
allow no impressive lessons or varied knowledge 
of life to be conveyed in anything that savors of 
fanciful invention. 

The deepest prejudice still remaining is that 
against theatres. Those wdio denounce them most 
fiercely usually declare that they have never 
entered one in their lives; but this confession of 
utter ignorance concerning them, which should be 



60 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

fatal, one would think, to a correct judgment in the 
matter, seems meant only to give stronger emphasis 
to the condemnation. Great and serious objections 
may properly be made to very many as at pres- 
ent conducted; and we might wish that some 
power could avail to close them at once; but these 
objections do not apply to all, nor are they such 
as the detractors specify. We are told that the 
dramatic art is essentially an unworthy one ; but 
the estimation of the world, from the earliest times, 
has placed it side by side with the arts of painting 
and sculpture, as deserving equal, if not greater 
honor. While they choose canvas and marble for 
their materials, this employs the motions and 
speech of living men ; but the aim of both is the 
same, — to reproduce and idealize nature and life. 
The great geniuses of every land have esteemed it 
worthy of their best talents ; and very many 
didactic authors, like Hannah More, Dr. Johnson, 
Joanna Baillie, and Miss Mitford, have chosen it 
as their favorite vehicle for conveying moral truths. 
When it is asserted that the tendency of plays is 
necessarily vicious, we need ordy to recall that 



THE 310RAL1TY OF AMUSE3IE1STS. 61 

effective temperance sermon which Rip Van 
Winkle has acted nightly for years to sympa- 
thetic crowds, none the less effective because he 
points no spoken moral_, and continues to cling to 
his old ways in the final scene. Such plays as 
'^ Dora/' ^^The Ticket-of-Leave Man/^ " School/' 
and, indeed, the greater part of those that succeed 
at the best theatres, cainiot fail to send every hearer 
away, not only the happier, but the better for hav- 
ing seen them, Avith a renewed love of goodness 
and native worth, and a stronger sympathy for the 
outcast and the suffering among mankind. 

The objection that is made to the private charac- 
ter of performers, if it could be sustained, has 
properly nothing to do with the case ; since we 
make no inquiries regarding the morals of the 
sculptor before sitting down to admire his last 
wonderful group, nor do we refuse to purchase 
a pair of shoes until convinced that the cobbler 
leads a virtuous life. We hope, of course, that they 
are both worthy men, but their habits can in no 
way concern the strength or beauty of their work. 
If the acting before us be conscientious and true. 



62 BROIFSING AMONG BOCKS. 

we have no business to prj behind the scenes. 
There are probably good and bad people in the 
dramatic as in all other professions; and certainly 
the many men and women who go nightly from 
the stage to happy, respectable homes, where 
they are as much honored for their private virtues 
as they are admired in public for their talents, 
may well query whether a readiness to malign and 
condemn a whole class without discrimination or 
justice is any proof of the possession of that supe- 
rior goodness and charity which their detractors 
claim. Insinuations of this character, once boldly 
made by a Western clergyman, were nobly re- 
buked by a letter from Madame Parejm-Eosa, who 
might well feel that in defending the honor of the 
dramatic and lyric stage, to which such women as 
Mrs. Siddons, Eistori, Fanny Kemble, Charlotte 
Cushman, Jenny Lind, and herself had devoted 
the best of their hves, she liad no unworthy cause 
to plead. 

But all these objections to theatrical representa- 
tions will be found to vanish entirely, if they are 
but christened anew. It is the name alone that is 



THE MORALITY OF AMUSEMENTS. 63 

their curse. Those loudest in condemning them 
will not hesitate to array themselves in ancient 
garbs to personate an Old Folks' Choir, or to 
carry on the spectacle of a farmer^s kitchen at a 
pubHc fair ; so that acting and costuming cannot 
be the reprehensible thing. Shorten good plays 
and call them dialogues, and you shall hear them 
spoken on the stage at Sabbath-school concerts. 
Write an opera on Biblical themes and designate 
it as an oratorio, and it may be performed in our 
strictest churches. Call a regularly established 
theatre, even, a museum, and though it be not a 
Avlnt better than the rest, you shall straightway 
behold a row of country deacons sitting enraptured 
on the front seats. Thus we see that while the 
Puritan objection still clings to the name, the 
Puritan objection to the substance has passed 
away. Can we not afford to be honest, and cease 
to scare ourselves longer with a bugbear whose 
mask alone is what we detest ? Can we not learn 
that some amusement must be had by young and 
old, and that by keeping people from that wliich 
is in its nature innocent, we may be driving them 
to diversions that are reallv sinful? 



64 BROWSING AillONG BOOKS. 

We must some day recognize the fact that what- 
ever makes men more hght-hearted makes them 
also better ; and that happiness not only conduces 
to health, but destroys, also, many temptations to 
crime. Then we shall lament that we have so few 
national holidays, and that so little real recreation 
seems possible within doors and at home. One 
of our cities gives proof of her intelligent care by 
throwing open her principal halls on festive days, 
that the children may dance and be merry, and by 
providing those of a larger growth with frequent 
concerts in the open air. But, as a people, we are 
chiefly dependent for diversion upon entertain- 
ments furnished by societies and individuals for 
private gain. Of these, theatres are the m.ost 
attractive; and in spite of all denunciations of 
bigotry and ignorance, they will always be at- 
tended by young and old. The drama in its 
essence and best estate cannot be regarded as evil; 
but since in our country it depends entirely for 
support upon the favor of the people, with no 
such help from Government as it receives in France 
and other nations, its actors will play well or ill, 



THE MORALITY OF A3WSEMENTS. 65 

good plajs or bad, as the public shall demand. 
What, then, is the duty of good and intelligent 
people, — to forsake the theatres altogether, de- 
liver them over to the base and wicked, and thus 
force them to minister to the lowest tastes ; or, by 
a judicious patronage, which shall encourage what 
is pure and praiseworthy, and condemn whatever 
is degrading, induce them to become the moral 
elevators and teachers of the people ? When so 
much remains to be done before even our favored 
portion of the world is won over to the love of 
virtue, we should seize every powerful social in- 
fluence by which good may be wrought, cleanse 
and ennoble it, and bring it in as a valiant recruit 
for our service. That this has been seen and ad- 
mitted by the majority of sensible people is the 
reason why, upon our best boards, the simply true 
and the intellectual, as represented by our finest 
actors, have ousted the inferior performances which 
disgrace the name of the drama; and it is the 
abandonment of minor theatres by the better class 
of citizens that has allowed them to descend to 
meretricious spectacles, which have vitiated public 

5 



66 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

taste, and rendered it possible to introduce to our 
Puritan cities the worst dances of the Mabille Gar- 
dens and the abominations of Offenbach's operatic 
scenes^ and to retain them there amid enthusiastic 
applause. 

When a stage has fallen to such a condition as 
this, no gradual reform from a counter opinion in 
the audience can be attempted, and none but our 
rulers have it in their power to efl'ect a decisive 
cure. One would think that the city fathers, into 
whose hands are committed the welfare of their 
fellow-citizens and the purity of soul of their own 
sons, would refuse to sanction by license those 
entertainments the influence of which can only be 
to debase and pollute. We might wish, for the 
sake of religion and virtue, that they were worthier 
of their trusts. 

Only an earnest support given to the best actors 
and the noblest plays can preserve our better 
theatres from this corruption; and such support 
would give a stimulus to that really artistic acting 
which seeks, by simple fidelity to nature, to pre- 
sent illustrations of moral excellence or reproduc- 
tions of historic scenes. 



THE MORALITY OF A31USEMENTS. 67 

As we would retain and encourage dancing, but 
divest it of the late hours, the promiscuous crowd, 
the unhealthful suppers, that now too often accom- 
pany it, and do our best to render it a cheery and 
delightful exercise, so should we sustain our 
drama, condemning and expurgating all coarse 
language and unworthy scenes, as wrong wherever 
witnessed, and committing it by such means to the 
service of the good and the true. Frivolity and 
extravagant dress are not its necessary accompani- 
ments ; nor is it impossible to begin its represen- 
tations at the early hour of seven, which is still 
the custom in Germany, and thus prevent it from 
encroaching upon the domain of required sleep. 
"We shall be wise to save the good wheat, and 
scatter the chaff to the winnowing winds. 



DUDS. 



TI> Y this irreverent term we designate those per- 
sonal effects and belongings which are re- 
tained about us when they have ceased to minister 
to our comfort and happiness. At times^ the en- 
tire material surroundings of life appear such 
wearisome incumbrances that we stigmatize them 
all, without exception, as duds; the garments, 
houses, books, pictures, which we call our own, 
seem no longer sources of help and pleasure, but 
only hampering cares to vex the soul. We won- 
der then why Nature did not make us like the 
birds, which flit from clime to clime, taking noth- 
ing with them, and leaving nothing behind. Beast 
and bird are furnished with one perennial suit of 
fur or feathers, which never requires to be changed ; 



BUBS. 69 



and this is kept for them in good repair and com- 
fortable condition. When they depart from the 
den or nest which has been their home, they im- 
provise another abode in the land to which they 
migrate, without bringing a twig or straw from 
tlie old. On tlieir journeys they burden them- 
selves with no supplies, for the wide earth is their 
foraging ground. 

To our race alone a love of property has been 
given, like a curse ; and by it we are made the 
slaves of our possessions. Wherever we go, there 
must go also a baggage train. Plato describes a 
man as a two-legged animal without feathers ; but 
he might have said, with equal truth, that he is 
the only animal that carries a bundle. It is true, 
as Horace sings, that black Care sits ever behind 
the horseman ; but it sits there in the shape of a 
roll of blankets or a leather valise. 

There is something derogatory to grandeur and 
dignity, as well as to freedom of movement, in this 
dependence upon personal effects. The moment a 
man clutches a carpet-bag, he ceases to be majestic. 
It is by the opprobrious epithet of "carpet-bagger'^ 



70 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

that our Southern brethren express contempt for 
Yankee residents and hold them up to ridicule. 
We never picture our heroes as sallying out with 
umbrella aud rubbers ; nor did the ancient poets 
ever describe Jujnter and Apollo as descending 
Olympus with an extra mantle thrown over their 
arms. This would imply at once that helpless 
subjection to the elements, and that distrust of the 
resources of the future, which belong only to weak 
mortals. The gods control nature, the brutes 
trust it; but man must wrest from it, by persist- 
ent toil, the bare materials from which to fabricate 
his needed shelter and supplies. 

The more civilization advances, the more do 
duds increase. Adam and Eve, departing from 
Paradise, were probably the only couple ever priv- 
ileged to move without luggage. Semi-barbar- 
ous races, like Bedouin Arabs and all nomadic 
tribes, are ready to pull up stakes on any fine 
morning, and start oft' for " pastures new/' They 
have not yet bartered freedom and light hearts for 
a mass of cumbersome belongings. But in our 
social centres, where skilled artisans are ever at 



BUBS. 71 



work, man finds himself more and more weighed 
down and clogged by this rubbish of conveniences ; 
so that he is really bound, like a serf, to the soil 
upon which he lives. The Eomans hit the right 
word when they called all luggage impedimenta^ — 
hindrances, impediments. 

Yet it is the chief aim of every one to add to his 
possessions ; and his worth and influence are made 
wholly dependent upon their number. What he 
is, is nothing ; it is what he has that tells. The 
poet who declared that man wants but little 
here below, nor wants that little long, must 
have been writing of a remote past, and that, 
too, with all the imagination and license of his 
race. 

If this be true, — that duds increase with the pro- 
gress of arts and general culture, — the size of trunks 
in use among a people may become no unfair test 
of their advancement in material civilization. Our 
grandmothers knew nothing of the Saratoga cot- 
tages that crowd baggage cars on our summer 
trains : our grandchildren will probably compress 
their itinerant effects into vast mansions of leather, 



72 BROWSING AMONCx BOOKS. 

beside which they themselves shall look like trav- 
ellers from Liliput. 

If any one wishes to realize the quantity of 
worldly goods that have accumulated about him, 
let him proceed to change his abode. Then not 
only serviceable articles appall him with their num- 
ber, but all antiquated duds emerge from tlieir 
forgotten retreats, huge, numberless, irrepressible, 
and seeming to demand the baggage-wagons of Xer- 
xes' army for their transportation. His lares and 
penates he would gladly bear away from the for- 
saken dwelling ; but he despairs of reaching the 
new Lavinium with this chaotic mass of useless 
rubbish. The whole together he would sell for 
a song ; but with each particular object he is un- 
willing to part. So they all go off together; and 
he fancies them jolting along upon the highway to 
the refrain "Blessed be nothing, blessed be noth- 
ing." When he sits down within doors again, on 
his recovered bales and boxes, he will be likely to 
meditate the writing of a tragedy in five impres- 
sive acts, in which, with all due regard to the uni- 
ties, and perhaps an ancient chorus thrown in, he 



BUBS. 73 



shall carry the heroine along through a succession of 
misfortunes till her ill luck culminates in the afflic- 
tion of having to move. His heart will then go 
out with pity toward all Methodist ministers, who 
are doomed to migrate every three years with the 
entire paraphernalia of a modern household. He 
can only hope that they realize on the start that it 
can never be theirs to plant a terribly fixed foot on 
any part of this rolling planet, and thus keep 
their wings always atilt for the expected flight, and 
that they also learn in time to resist the tendency 
which duds have to gather about a householder, 
like steel filings about a magnet. 

In old dwelling-houses, duds, properly so called, 
have their rightful domain. We consecrate the 
upper story to these relics of a vanished j)ast; and 
it is indeed their garret, their place of refuge, their 
last retreat. There, beneath silent eaves, over- 
hung by no tapestries save those spun by Arachne, 
and resting upon the soft carpets that are dropped, 
flake by flake, from the viewless air, they spend a 
quiet old age, untroubled by the world below. 
Erom the splendors of the first floor, to which they 



74 BROWSmG AMONG BOOKS. 

came in fresh beauty, to adorn parlor and boudoir, 
they have gradually passed to higher and narrower 
apartments, bringing to upper regions the fashions 
that have fled ; and now, worn out and useless, 
they reach at length that final hospital set apart 
for the maimed and crippled of their race. There 
congregate the stately chairs, lame of a leg and 
weak in the back, whose sprays of worn embroider- 
ies grew and blossomed under young fingers that 
have long been motionless and forgotten; there 
gleam the tarnished mirrors, over whose bevelled, 
lustrous squares have flitted the portraits of de- 
parted squires and dames ; there rise the tall andi- 
rons, behind whose glittering brass once leaped 
the warm flames and dropped tlie clinking coals; 
there rust out at last the tin kitchens that shall 
never open again toward blazing fireplaces, with a 
Christmas turkey sputtering within, as we remem- 
ber them in our young and hungry days. 

We cannot but regard witli a certain tenderness 
these dumb material servitors that have minis- 
tered to our comfort. For years, perhaps, they 
served us well, and contributed no small portion 



LVDS. 75 



to the sum of our daily happiness. By long asso- 
ciation with us they have almost become a part of 
our individuality; and their remembered forms 
have interwoven themselves with many a dream 
and fancy of the brain. And, indeed, any biog- 
raphy of ourselves which should fail to devote a 
chapter to a certain faithful old shawl, or to 
furnish reminiscences of treasured garments that 
have figured prominently in our history, would 
seem to us too unreal and fragmentary for a cor- 
rect portraiture. 

Gratitude suggests that sucli garments, in their 
old age, should be cared for and cherished like 
disabled slaves. It is doleful to see them at the 
doors of second-hand clothing stores, dangling 
like lank spectres of departed glory, or swinging 
from lofty hooks, like lynched culprits from a 
tree-bough. How flabby and characterless looks 
the little blue boddice, beating about in the morn- 
ing wind ! We fancy that its sleeves were fitted to 
plump white arms, and that it was a fair young 
throat that rose first above those ruffles and frills. 
And it must have been a pretty face that looked 



76 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

out under that coquettish hat lying beliiiid tlie 
dirty window, with its faded flowers still rising 
jauntily above the crown. Are their former own- 
ers moving in higher scenes, while casting off 
these outworn fineries for less favored sisters to 
shine in for a brief hour, or have they sunk into 
poverty and wretchedness, pawning their scanty 
possessions for the means to support life? We 
will trust that they are disporting themselves in 
braver and fresher attire, while these shabby gar- 
ments swing and dangle drearily in the east wind, 
which shows little res2)ect for their early history, 
whatever it may have been. 

Duds seem at all times a satire on the past. 
Limp, faded, and useless, they are the sole relics 
of our departed joys, our scenes of pride and tri- 
umph. We strive to recall the hours of social 
delight, when life was filled to the brim with rosy 
wine, but can only vainly ask, with Hans Breit- 
mann. Where is that party now? The soiled 
gloves, the torn laces, have survived it, and are 
the only thhigs that live to tell the tale. The ex- 
ternal has proved the one part of the scene that is 



DUDS. 77 



substantial and enduring. We would rather wish 
that memories alone, dim and evanescent though 
they be, should suggest the vanished beauty of the 
past ; we desire no visible and mocking reminders 
of what we have lost. Lethe is pleasanter to con- 
template than Limbo. 

But annihilation, even of earthly substance, is 
no easy process. We look forward to the day 
when skilful mechanics shall construct furniture 
of such well- matched material that, like the dea- 
con's shay, all parts shall give out together, and 
leave no battered fragments to be housed and 
protected for years. Then every splinter shall be 
resolved at once into its component elements. 
Our modern houses prefigure such a condition of 
things when they contain no unfinished attics for 
the retention of cast-off rubbish. Give to the 
flames or to the poor whatever you do not use, is 
the wisdom they enforce. 

It is not individuals alone who hoard remains 
of departed usefulness; the State has also its duds 
laid away in halls and archives, and our Antiqua- 
rian and Historical Societies are formed that they 



78 BROWSING JMONG BOOKS. 

may be collected and preserved. No magician can 
recall the past ; but the trappings and furnishings 
it has left behind, the armor of its heroes, the 
robes of its monarchs, the coin of its kingdoms, the 
obsolete laws of its codes, — all remaining fossils 
from which the spirit has forever fled, may be 
snatched awhile from oblivion, that by their help 
historians may produce a truer semblance of that 
olden time. Fortunately for us, America inherits 
but a small portion of that cumbrous legacy of 
unmeaning customs and effete institutions which 
impedes the progress of so many nations. 

Although outward adornments may seem the 
only survivors of scenes in which they bore a part, 
— like empty flagons left behind when their rich, 
sweet contents have long evaporated, — they are 
really the one perishable element of past events. 
It is the things that are seen that are temporal, 
" the things that are unseen are eternal.^^ Our 
memories, our thoughts, ourselves, are the result 
of all those vanished influences, and outlive the 
changing shapes of time. The soul is the only 
real part of us; all things else are foreign and 



BUDS. 79 



transient. It borrows from this planet, body, 
clothing, and a dwelling ; and departing leaves 
them all behind, and journeys on, alone and naked, 
toward enduring mansions that are not made with 
hands. 



BOSTON COMMON ON A SEPTEMBER 
AFTERNOON. 



/^^LEAR autumn sunshine sifts down through 
the yellowing elm-leaves of the Common, and 
lies softly quivering upon the paths, as we come 
in from the noisy street to indulge a quiet reverie 
under swaying boughs. Two summer months 
have come and gone since we took our last stroll 
along these leafy colonnades; and though wider and 
wilder landscapes have revealed their charms to us 
since then, we are not sorry to exchange them all 
for a sight of this pleasant spot. Our wanderings 
have disclosed no fairer view than these vistas of 
sunlit avenues, this low-liung, verdurous canopy 
under which we move, this level greensward 
streaked with the shadows of tree-boles and warm 



BOSTON CO 31 310 N. 81 



with the radiance of a bright September afternoon. 
We note their trim beauties with fresh delight as 
we leave the edge of the pond and climb up the 
sloping path to our favorite seat on the highest 
mall. Not far beyond us stretch the ungainly 
branches of the gingko-tree ; and its finely veined, 
fan-like leaves give a soft flutter as we approach. 
It is a stir of surprise and welcome, for the gingko- 
tree knows us well, and we are glad to see each 
other again. Here, then, we will sit, undisturbed 
by the life and hurry that we passed just now in 
the lower paths, — the strangers and children star- 
ing in at the deer, the throng coming up from the 
Providence Depot, boys kicking football, and 
tanned old apple-women dozing beside their tables, 
the blind beggar croaking dolorous songs, a big 
telescope pointed heavenward, men with " dorgs '' 
dripping from a plunge into the pond, the near 
rattle of horse-cars and rumble of drays. To this 
retired spot the nurses come to wheel their little 
chaises ; now and then a newsboy offers his paper 
in insinuating tones to the loungers on the seats, 
and the merry tone of a hand-organ comes up 
from the side street in faint tinkles of sound. 



BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 



It is plain that summer days have flown. Soft 
afternoon sunshine strikes up the high bank oppo- 
site, and broken shadows from the tree-tops sway 
and float across it ; but the light does not burn, 
and the shadows are less dense than those of June. 
Over the hard sand before us skurries a little 
troop of fallen leaves, breaking suddenly into mad 
whirls and waltzes, as they begin to realize their 
strange freedom from parent boughs. They graze 
lightly along in their airy pirouettes ; but it is a 
dance of death, and reminds us of the hoar-frost 
and snow-flakes that shall come to cover withered 
heaps huddled by the wayside. Two or three 
yellow butterflies still go wavering over the faded 
turf, searching, perhaps, for a fresh clover-top; 
and a clumsy, mumbling bee clings upside down 
to a grass-blade, as if doing his best to commit 
suicide by hanging. Ah, poor little rovers, no 
more sweet honey-draughts welling up in the 
flower-horns for you ! Hasten away across these 
grassy spaces to a broad, low garden, for there you 
shall find some remnants of midsummer glories 
left, and drain your last beaker before you die ! 



BOSTON COMMON. 83 

We miss the cliirp of the robins^, and the squir- 
rels that leaped from the tree-boles, and tilted, 
with motions quicker than sight, over the ground. 
Already these children of the summer have found 
out what our chill mornings and cooler suns mean, 
and are making ready for the inevitable change. 
We miss, too, the tall booth draped in forlorn 
blue cambric, within which Punch and Judy were 
wont to enact for us their little domestic tragedy. 
Evidently they have departed from our Common, 
followed, let us hope, by a long train of sorrowing 
urchins, who were there to bid them a last and 
tearful good-by. They reminded us, somehow, 
of pretty Mignon and Italy, of gypsies and stroll- 
ing players, of English fairs and merry-makings ; 
and now they have fled. No more do we stand 
among crowds of silent newsboys and country 
youths to see that swaggering little ruffian brow- 
beat and abuse the meek and suffering Judy ; no 
more is our soul racked with torture as he swings 
her from the scaffold, and pommels her into her 
tiny coffin. We had never the heart to loiter after 
that cruel scene ; and now we may not learn the 



84 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

vengeance of the last act^ nor what pangs of re- 
morse seized her unprincipled lord. 

We mourn departed joys ; but yet, surely, these 
are not " the melancholy days, the saddest of tlie 
year/' The sunlight flooding the bank and light- 
ing up the stately house-fronts that rise beyond 
the iron paling looks marvellously soft and delight- 
some. Tendrils of woodbine glisten in it, thick 
and green, as they dangle from the balconies ; 
beneath them tall bushes of the Rose of Sliaron 
lift their crimson-petalled blooms. Closed case- 
ments tell of families still lingering in country 
homes ; but up and down the long street we see 
many windows open to the sun, and behind their 
rose-tinted panes appear the shapely heads of little 
ladies bending over their tasks. We behold them 
dimly, but have no doubt that they are all young 
and beautiful, and that they bend to read some 
poet's musical stroj)he, or to weave silken presents 
for absent lovers. Occasionally they glance up to 
survey the world outside their bowers of brick and 
stone ; but no one of them discovers the wrinkled 
crone that sits under a tree of the Common, droj^- 



BOSTON C0M3WN. 85 

ping her crutch as she wipes her spectacles for a 
clearer gaze. 

Nearer objects divert our sight ; for along the 
street that lies between us and the house-fronts 
begin to roll many gny equipages, on their way to 
the breezy Milldam and the sunny fields beyond. 
Here a great family coach containing two portly 
dowagers is slowly descending the hill; and just 
behind it a pretty damsel sits alone in her basket 
phaeton, holding the reins somewhat nervously, 
and looking out sharply for colliding hubs. Soon 
there dashes past them a gay little wagon with 
glancing wheels, and a proud young Adonis for a 
charioteer. Now Miss McFlimsey^s carriage comes 
into view ; and we behold that estimable lady 
sinking back on high cushions, with a pet spaniel 
beside her, and a coachman as big as one of King 
Frederick's grenadiers, sitting, bolt upright and 
terrible, on the seat before. Everybody, indeed, 
is starting off for the afternoon drive. It is the 
right hour ; and but for one little circumstance 
we should hasten to join that festive throng, and 
the circumstance is this, — that the horses which fit 



86 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

our harnesses still roam in proud freedom over 
South American pampas^ and no lasso can entrap 
those mettlesome steeds. So it is our pleasure 
to sit here under the trees, and watch, in dreaming 
mood, the empty barouche standing at the mansion 
opposite, with a tall Jehu decorating the front seat, 
and the smallest of small boys clinging boldly be- 
side him. We are sure that some vastly fine lady 
is to take her airing within it, since it waits so 
long for her coming ; but no, it is a fine old gen- 
tleman, instead, that mounts the step, with much 
aid from man-servants, and much wrapping of the 
foot that he stretches on the seat before him. 
Then, when all is done, a little damsel comes io 
sit beside him, and a fair-haired youth, of brave 
and noble bearing, pleasant to behold, takes tlie 
opposite corner, sitting well off from the invalid 
foot. We know them to be the dear cliild Ethel 
Newcome and Cousin Clive, bent upon an hour^s 
pleasuring under bright skies; and we rejoice that 
Lady Kew is unable to accompany them to-day, 
and that this bland old gentleman has taken her 
place. Now Ethel adjusts her parasol, the tall 



BOSTON COMMON. 87 

Jeliu gathers in the ribbons^ the small boy clutches 
the seat railing, and the equipage wheels around 
and vanishes from sight. 

Then we turn to take a last gaze over the green- 
sward behind us, sloping down and away till it 
seems to meet the drooping boughs. After all, 
there is no scene so pleasant as this. A distant 
elm-tree, steeped in amber hues before its time, 
stretches out between greener boughs, like a golden 
radiance. Tripping beneath this canopy, with 
drops of liglit flitting over her as she moves, a red- 
shawled maiden gives to the mellow landscape 
that charm of contrasting color which painters 
love. If the great Brewer Fountain, just visible 
beyond, were really a fountain, and not a towering 
structure of bronze, it should be playing to-day, 
and spouting columns of plashing drops over Nep- 
tune and his naiad queens ; but these w^ater-loving 
deities have long sat high and dry upon their ped- 
estal, and the little cherubs above are faint with 
protracted thirst. The great jet in the pond is a 
fairer sight to see, when it sends up its torrent of 
sparkling diamonds ; but that, too, is still, and a 



88 BROWSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

gentle breeze scarcely ruffles the shallow water 
around it. Sometimes^ when a strong wind tosses 
the boughs overhead, we watch the wavelets blow 
like dark shadows across the surface of the pond; 
and at evening golden quivering lights stream 
down into its depths, and then we always believe 
the pond to be fathoms deep, Avith schools of 
strange fish stemming its undercarrents, and sev- 
eral respectable mermaids sitting far below, at 
doors of sea-green caverns, engaged in combing 
their dripping locks. 

Yes, whether in wind or calm, morning or even- 
ing, we like this verdurous Common. Bostonians 
are proverbially silent concerning its merits, as they 
are of all their possessions, and are given to a need- 
less undervaluing of the town in which they dwell; 
but no false modesty prevents us from declaring 
that every sandy path and worm-eaten branch of 
this place remains dear to our heart. No newer 
park will ever rival its attractions. The Public 
Garden is prettier, but it is laid out for display 
and nice effects, and seems copying the beauties 
of older and finer pleasure-grounds. Nevertheless, 



BOSTON COMMON. 89 

we would not disparage the Garden unduly. With 
its parterres, its vases of trailing plants, its seats 
embowered in shrubbery, its statues and fountains, 
it is a fit place for cheerful rambles, and appears 
made for the sauntering of happy lovers. We 
may always encounter there scores of smiling 
couples, who apparently find it not unpleasant to 
be young, to have a beau, and to walk there on 
moony nights. Though one of the two is smok- 
ing a villanous meerschaum, we can see that he is 
not concerned just now about the probable price 
per foot of the land on which he treads, nor 
whether the neighboring houses are built with 
subcellars ; and tlie other is plainly of opinion that 
she is gazing upon a midsummer moonlight in 
Arcady. 

We go there sometimes at early evening to see 
Venice ; for, like the Marchioness, we have been 
endowed with the gift of making believe; and, 
standing upon the edge of the lake, we see before 
us a dark canal, shadowed by oozy palace-wails. 
The tiny boats at the farther end of the lake are 
gliding gondolas, and their boatmen lithe and 



90 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

swarthy gondoliers^ who have just ceased singing 
to noble travellers the songs of Tasso. "We hear the 
faint echoes still reverberating under the dark arcli 
of the " Bridffe of Size." Or we turn awav from 
the water view to behold only the little temple, 
the statues, the tangled parterres, the flower-lined 
paths; and then it is some charming garden of 
Paris. Beyond it rises the forest of Fontainebleau, 
and the dome of the Hotel des Invalides. We 
have not the slightest idea whether the hotel and the 
aforesaid forest are within a dozen miles of each 
other, but that does not trouble us in the least. 

However, one is not always disposed to make be- 
lieve, and in soberer moods we prefer the plain, 
unpretending Common. Here we come to dream 
in quiet, as we have to-day, waiting till the last 
glimpse of sunlight has left the tree-tops, before we 
dismiss all idle fancies and go home to a late 
supper. 



THE SELECTION OF GIFTS. 



T TOWEYEE familiar we may be with the 
needs and fancies of our friends, it is never 
an easy thing to clioose the objects that shall 
be sure to please their tastes. Commerce may 
have brought the handiwork of many nations, the 
products of every clime, to spread before us for 
our choice, and yet we find among their treas- 
ures nothing that will seem desirable to all. 
Books are an enduring and ennobling pleasure ; but 
who shall select reading for any mind, knowing 
not what it lias nor what it longs for? Pictures 
open in the blank wall vistas of inaccessible beauty, 
— dim forest glades or sunlit ruins, wild stretches 
of moorland overhung with clouds, or warm 
clumps of garden bloom, where butterflies flit and 
baes wander on unending errands; but we can- 



92 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

not give the eye that is fitted to comprehend 
their glories,, and if that be wanting, the color will 
be spread in vain. 

To ladies, with their love of tlie niceties of art, 
and their catholic taste for beauty in all its forms, 
we feel sure that anything which is finished and 
exquisite will give delight, tliough it may possess 
no other excellence. If we have a fancy for mak- 
ing our mankind ridiculous, we can provide them 
with gorgeously flowered dressing-gowns, in which 
they may array themselves of an evening like 
Persian bashaws, can set their feet in slippers of 
defiant hues and pronounced design, and drop 
over their heads tasselled smoking-caps, and thus 
do our prettiest to convert them into harlequins. 
Or we may knit for them immense scarfs, whose 
ends of bright fringes flapping over their shoul- 
ders shall proclaim them to the world as somebody^s 
darling. Beyond this we are powerless ; their 
wants are few and well supplied, their tastes are 
positive, and we may not hope to satisfy them. 

Of late years the world has busied itself with 
providing entertainment for children ; but since 



THE SELECTION OF GIFTS. 93 

every object with vvliicli the minds of little people 
come in contact is an element in their education, 
we should endeavor even in their toys to benefit 
as Avell as amuse, to set their wits to work in 
some profitable manner, or to train their physical 
powers by active games. At least, let us see that 
our gifts do not prove deleterious to their health or 
distracting to those about them. Children have 
two dominant passions, — a love of candy and a 
love of noise ; but it is quite possible to furnish 
them with the gayest sport without indulging 
either, without making them sick with bonbons or 
driving the neighborhood frantic with tin trumpets 
and drums. Even at their early age it may be 
well to learn a wholesome respect for the rights of 
others. 

There are presents which we make to erase 
some claim of indeterminate value, or to discharge 
gracefully a debt not acknowledged as such ; but 
these have no right to the name whose pleasant 
sound they borrow. The primal object of any 
real present is, of course, to convey an assurance 
of affection. Independently of its inherent worth. 



94 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

a gift from a loving friend will be precious sim- 
ply because it is a gift^ because we know by it 
that another has thought of us^ lias wished to 
please us, has made some sacrifice of time and 
money to do so. Words may have said as much 
as this before, and found ready belief; but there 
is no word so eloquent as a deed, no emphasis 
that language can receive equal to a corres2)onding 
act. 

But though any gift is a kindly message sent 
from friend to friend, its meaning becomes 
stronger and sweeter with the time and thouglit 
that have been given to its preparation. A gew- 
gaw from a shop-window will prove to us that 
we have been remembered, but its purcliase may 
have been the impulse of a moment ; a piece of 
workmanship over which the eyes we love have 
dropped with tender glances, over which dear 
fingers have fiitted and busied themselves hour 
after hour, possesses a far greater charm ; it tells 
of many dreams in which a thought of ourselves 
has been uppermost, of many bright imaginings 
wdth which another's fancy has been wreathing 



THE SELECTION OF GIFTS. 95 

our name. Above the visible beauty of its woven 
fabric is wrought this airy arabesque of kind re- 
membrance, more lovely and acceptable than the 
richest woof that may glow beneath. 

We desire that the gift we tender shall have 
some positive worth of its own, lest, if it bs 
paltry, we may appear to overrate the charm of 
our association with it, or else to hold in light 
esteem the friendship of which it is a token. Its 
value, however, should never be excessive, what- 
ever the means of the giver ; for then it would 
seem to say, " Now, my good friend, I hold you 
at a disadvantage ; you have become my debtor ; " 
and it is both natural and right that lovers even 
should prefer to keep their accounts well balanced, 
and to maintain a feeling of equality. Whatever 
the worth, we feel that our gift must never be 
merely useful, but appear by some grace or beauty 
of its own to minister to the finer tastes of our 
friend. Otherwise we shall seem to be supplying 
his wants and conferring upon him a charity. 

The fondest heart will hold no offering com- 
plete and appropriate which does not comprise all 



96 BROJrSING AMONG BOOKS. 

possible merits. However beautiful in themselves, 
love is solicitous that its precious tokens shall 
also be difficult to obtain, enduring in their beauty, 
associated with some place remote and famous, 
and, if possible, such as will benefit as well as 
charm. 

The flower that sprung by our own doorstep 
would be hardly worth our acceptance ; but if its 
fellow^ were brought to us from the heart of a bog, 
by adventurous feet and eager hands, we should 
receive the trifle as if it were a treasure. Not 
easily attainable, it would possess one element of 
value beyond its own worth, while it w^ould lack 
another charm, — that of endurance. Nothing 
that we can present is so lovely as flowers, but 
nothing is so fleeting. The bountiful hand that 
flings them over the earth need never be emi)ty, 
and can renews them faster than they fade ; but 
we would wish our meagre bounties to be lasting, 
since we have so few to bestow. 

An association with foreign scenes will render a 
gift most precious and welcome which otherwise 
were worthless. It may be a dry little leaf that 



THE SELECTION OF GIFTS. 97 

drops out of the letter; but wheu we learn that it 
hung and fluttered a few weeks ago above VirgiFs 
tomb, that its shadow wandered, beneath the soft 
Italian sunlight, over the time-honored stones, 
and tliat under the cool fragrance of its parent 
branches dusty peasants rested just outside the 
beautiful city, we refuse to rate its price in silver 
and gold. A tiny bottle of red sand is a sorry 
and useless tiling in itself ; but if we know that its 
contents were scooped up from the wastes of an 
African desert, beneath the feet of weary camels, 
and that in the wrath of fierce simooms its grains 
may have whirled around the corners of the Pyra- 
mids, or blown into the eyes of the very Sphinx, 
we will tell you to carry off our whole sea-beach, 
but to spare us that. The Kenilworth ivy at 
your window trembles now only to the canary's 
song ; but it grew from a stalk against which may 
have swept the train of Queen Bess herself, as she 
rustled her brocade down Leicester's garden alleys, 
flirting with the lavish Duke while they saun- 
tered on toward some fresh out- door revel. They 
tell us that Shakspeare may have been there, a 
7 



08 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

boy of twelve or so ; and we are sure the bright- 
eyed little lad took note of the pretty vine swing- 
ing and swaying from the cnstle wall^ if it had any 
beauty in those days. And poor Amy Eobsart — 
her story is written on those eloquent leaves. The 
traveller who brought to you that little branch of 
green brought you also more dreams and fancies 
than you ever thanked him for. 

And when^ from over the waves, in trunks that 
have outlived all perils by sea and land, there 
come to remembered friends green, cloudy mala- 
chites from Eussia, pink corals from Naples, wood- 
carvings from Switzerland, and all marvels of nice 
workmanship from Paris, what charm or value do 
they lack? They combine all excellences that 
any gift can possess ; and so long as they shall 
endure in their rare beauty, they will bear witness 
how much the worth of a gift may be enhanced 
by its associations, and by the thought that in 
foreign scenes, amid jostling crowds and strange 
faces, warm hearts have not forgotten those who 
were left behind. 

No present is so perfect but it may receive an 



THE SELECTION OF GIFTS. 99 

added grace from the manner in which it is be- 
stowed. That roynl Cyrus of whom Xenophon 
tells such fine things knew better than any other 
how much depends on this art of putting a case. 
He sends a remnant of his dinner to some general 
of his army ; and the half-eaten goose, which by 
a clumsy speech would have been made an insult, 
— an offering of cold victuals, indeed, — becomes 
by his message a token of courtliest favor. And 
this is what he says : '^ Cyrus hath tasted of this 
and hath found it excellent, and he desires that 
you may enjoy it also.'^ The giver would always 
wish to tender his offering by any hand but his 
own, that he may not seem ready for the gratitude 
of his friend, who, in his first surprise and pleasure, 
may have no fitting word to express his thanks. 
Presentations made in public, with the necessity 
for a speech in reply, if the gift be genuine and 
unexpected, appear to be a refinement of torture, 
which only our fondness for speech-making can 
lead us to tolerate. 

A truer feeling teaches us to gather together 
our Christmas presents for children and to offer 



100 BROWSING J MONO BOOKS. 

them in any fictitious name. It is Santa Claus 
who bears them in, on still, cold nights, hitching 
his team of prancing reindeers to the chimney-tops 
while he descends with Lis store. And we obtain 
his presence, in mask and fur wrappings, to distrib- 
ute his treasures one by one from the boughs of 
a glittering tree ; or we allow dimj^led fingers at 
early daylight to pluck their own out of the stock- 
ings which were hung open and ready the night 
before. And there is nobody to thank ; for the 
strange little fellow who brought them all has 
whisked himself off in a twinklinfr, and is never 
seen more. From what far wonder-land they 
were transported in that swift sledge of his, no 
one cares to inquire. 

O happy time of absurdity and romance, how 
gladly would we surrender the hard knowledge of 
later years if we could believe in your sweet non- 
sense once more ! 



GOOD-WILL TOWARDS MEN/' 



TT was a grand, sweet song that the angels sung 
over that little Eoman province eighteen hun- 
dred years ago. The import of its gracious words 
must have startled the ears of all who heard them, 
for they proclaimed a doctrine new to mankind. 

" War on earth, good-will only towards my citi- 
zens," had been the message carried by Eome's 
imperial eagles to all beyond her borders. Her 
liostile legions had marched victorious into every 
land, and still held the nations subject by the strong 
arm of conquest. Tlius had she gained tliis re- 
mote corner of her domain, over whose plains, on 
that first Christmas morning, rang out the strange 
melody, — " Peace on earth, good-will towards 
men.''^ A brotherhood of all people, a union of all 



102 BROIVSING A3WNG BOOKS. 

interests, was the prophecy it spoke; and the Child 
who lay there in his unhonored cradle had come 
upon earth that its fidfilment might be possible 
in the far future of the world. 

Two thousand years have nearly passed since 
then, and we have yet to learn the meaning of 
this song. From the divine teachings which it 
heralded have flowed the blessings of European 
and American civilization ; but the existence of a 
universal brotherly love among mankind, w^hicli 
those teachings must ultimately produce, is still 
a dream and a chimera. Premonitions of such a 
feeling have come, like an inspiration, to few. 
Already, in that ancient empire, one mind, and 
one alone, had looked beyond the confines of its 
selfishness; and those sublime words of Terence — 
"I am a man and feel for all mankind " — still shine 
forth above the narrow self-seeking of our time. 
They found no echo in the hearts of his country- 
men, they find scarcely any in ours. 

We love those who are near to us; we love our 
State ; in times of national peril we find swelling 
up in our bosoms a love for our country : but 



"GOOD-WILL TOirjRDS 3IEK" 103 

here philanthropy ends. Patriotism is the utmost 
bound of our affection; and to us, as to the 
Romans, all beyond our limits are barbarians. 
We treat them with more consideration; for no na- 
tion is now mighty enough to domineer haughtily 
over otliers. We deal with antagonists who are 
equal to us in strength ; and the greater courtesy 
of our bearhig is due rather to a respect for the 
number and range of our neighbor's cannon than 
to any increase of good-will. Intercourse with 
foreign governments is chiefly concerned v.ith dis- 
putes and differences ; and we choose for Secreta- 
ries of State and diplomatic representatives the 
men who possess the art of calling other powers 
thieves and robbers with the most serene and 
suave urbanity. We may bandy grand compli- 
ments, but we still keep a hand upon the sword- 
hilt. 

Our own country, the youngest and noblest of 
all, has ever opened wide her doors to the crowded 
nations of the earth ; but she extends no hand of 
fellowship to those who remain at home beyond 
the seas. Foreigners must step for aye upon her 



104 BROWSING A3WNG BOOKS. 

shores to obtain from her good-will and protec- 
tion ; and even now she is half ready to retract 
her former welcome, and to close her gates in the 
face of a great people, should her interests seem to 
demand it. The Uoman playwright can still teach 
us love for mankind; and the Greek Socrates 
shames our narrow patriotisms with his noble 
declaration, " The whole world is my country/' 

And yet slowly and steadily, as the ages roll 
away, we may discover growing up a code of in- 
ternational law^, founded upon the broad basis of 
justice peacefully conceded to all ; and the vision 
of a congress of nations, to whose wise and firm 
arbitrament all lands shall habitually look for the 
redress of wrongs and the adjustment of disputes 
which now each one must right and settle for 
itself with the sword, comes with stronger force to 
the few who look beyond the wars and tumults 
of our day to a final reign of peace on earth. 
Already one such assembly has been called to 
adjudicate the rival claims of two of the greatest 
powers of the earth ; and we have seen its deci- 
sions accepted as final and obligatory. Such a fact 



"GOOL-JFILL TOJFARBS MENr 105 

as the Geneva Congress shows that the world is 
ripe for the acceptance of a larger and more com- 
prehensive statesmanship than has hitherto dared 
to display itself at the council-boards of kings. 
The dreams of the past become the realities of the 
future; and we may believe that in some good 
hereafter the swords shall indeed be beaten into 
pruning-hooks, and nations, like individuals, aban- 
don the creed that it is might which makes right 
in the world. 

Ages, however, must roll aw^ay before the first 
Christmas Carol can be sung as anything but a 
prophecy. Far from outgrowing the wisdom of 
that great Teacher whose birth it celebrated, we 
have scarcely learned the import of the precepts 
of philanthropy Avhich he uttered eighteen centu- 
ries -ago. 

This is evident not only in the intercourse of 
nations, but in the relations of individuals and in 
the common practices of life. The sentiment of 
good- will towards men must include also our foes ; 
and Christ especially enjoins that we should love 
our enemies and bless them who persecute us. 



106 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

But tliis doctrine seems still too hard for human 
nature to accept. Few beside Yictor Hugo's 
good bishop attempt to carry out the lesson of 
turning the other cheek to those who smite us, of 
going two miles with a man who compels us to go 
one, of offering our coat to him who has robbed 
us of our cloak ; and we think we have a more 
effectual way of heaping coals of fire upon an 
enemy^s head than by administering kind words. 

Tit for tat was the precept which held swny 
before this new injunction; and there is still 
enough of the Feejee Islander in us to delight in 
its application. Good gifts to our friends, good 
hard knocks to our enemies, is what we declare 
to be consistent with dignity and self-respect. 
Give only what is deserved, do unto others what- 
ever they do unto you ; for if you treat your 
friends as you do your enemies, and love them all, 
what reward have they more than others? is our 
perverted version, and we would fain believe it to 
be the true one. " Stand up for your rights, my 
boy ; do not yield an inch to another's crowding," 
does not sound much like the texts about the two 



''GOOD-WILL TOIFJRDS 31EN:' 107 

miles^ the other cheek, and tlie coat. We pray, 
like the Jewish king, for confusion upon our 
foes; and appear to think that the verse '^^ Revenge 
is sweet, saith the Lord,'^ may be found in tlie 
Good Book. 

Even the doctrine of formvins; our enemies, so 
mucli easier to practise than that of loving them, 
is regarded as absurdly generous, — a practice that 
may be common in the millennium, but hardly to 
be expected of ordinary mortals at the present 
time. A prostrate enemy we could forgive; we 
would not drag a dead Hector around the walls ; 
and would even bring tenderly into hospitals the 
wounded foe from the battle-field. Thus much 
will our humanity do. But to declare that we 
had forgiven the injury of an equal or a superior 
would seem to us a confession of cowardice. Only 
by showing ourselves sensitive to insults do we 
think to obtain fair treatment from others. 

This doctrine of non-resistance to wrong does, 
doubtless, presuppose in a man a- grand patience, 
that can calmly wait for the slow adjustments of 
time, and in his oppressors a susceptibility to ^ew- 



108 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

erous conduct that can hardly be said to exist in 
our present semi-barbarous society. 

When^ in the progress of time, all men shall 
learn to uphold the primal articles of the Quaker^s 
creed, it will be possible for us to trust to a true 
impulse and a tender conscience for the mainte- 
nance of individual right ; and ^Yhen citizens shall 
practise towards each other this noble forbearance, 
we may look for similar dealing in the intercourse 
of States. 

Far away as such a period appears to us, it 
must surely come, if truth and goodness are to 
triumph at last in their contest with wrong and 
prejudice, and if the words of that Christmas song 
which rung over the plains of Judsea are to receive 
their fulfilment upon earth. 



OLD-FxVSHIONED FLOWERS. 



/^~^ ARDENING, like every human pursuit, is 
subject to the whims of the hour, and renders 
Nature herself the handmaid of Fashion. Pope^s 
workmen followed the prevailing mode when they 
lopped the trees at Twickenham into fantastic shaj^es, 
and scooped out an artificial grotto for the delight 
of the rhyming philosoplier and his city friends. 
Years ago we shaped our flower-beds into regular 
diamonds, circles, and squares, bereft them of 
every blade of grass, marked their bounds by an 
edge of pinks or box, and separated them by 
narrow paved walks that served only as high- 
ways for spiders and crickets. Now at length we 
discover the contrasting beauty of green turf; 
and, heaping together rich masses of color, we set 



110 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

them in round parterres in tlie midst of sliaven 
lawns. 

But the plants that bloom there are not the 
friends of other days^ the darlings of our childhood ; 
for those have gone into exile, sent thither to make 
room for the strange, uncanny faces that dis])hiy 
themselves at horticultural fairs, and fill with their 
heathenish names the catalogues of florists. New 
favorites find many to praise; but to our eyes no 
flowers can be as fair as the roses and clove-pinks, 
the pansies and lilies, that grew in old-fashioned 
gardens, where syringas and lilacs towered in the 
corners, and columbines, marigolds, brave London- 
pride, and ladies'-delights ran riot between. There 
a bank of ribbon-grass fluttered its stripes of green 
and silver, each blade of a different pattern ; climb- 
ing honeysuckles freighted the evening air with 
perfume; and beside the house-door morning- 
glories spread wide their fi'esh, cool tents for a day^s 
entertainment to all roaming bees. No Baltimore 
Belle or Queen of the Prairie can rival the full, 
deep-hearted cabbage-roses, as they bloom in our 
memory, or match the hue of their crimson, single- 



OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS. Ill 

leaved sisters^ flaming beside them on low stalks. 
Even the old-maid's-pinks^ bursting out sideways 
beyond all bounds^ the pungent southernwood and 
tansy, and the leathery Aaron^s Eod, — transformed 
into inflatable " toads^ backs '' by slow pressing 
betwixt thumb and finger in the days when time 
was not money, — all wear now the charm which 
clothes the half- forgotten scenes of childhood. 

Many of these flowers, we must think, had 
a beauty all their own. Hollyhocks have now no 
friends, neither have sunflowers nor poppies.^ We 
are in a mood for nice effects, and must have our 
blossoms small and exquisite. Nothing is planted 
nowadays to delight the eye at a distance; no 
clumps of stalwart sunflowers lift their broad, 
velvety disks, with halos of golden rays shining 
far and wide, each upturned flower an enamoured 
Clytie, gazing after the glowing wheels of the sun. 
We no longer suffer peonies to blaze abroad 
with their full crimson petals ; nor do we behold, 
noddhig and swinging beyond the garden wall, a 

1 Since ttis was written, fashion has revived a taste for these 
long-neglected flowers, and delighted the hearts of their constaat 
admirers. 



112 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

row of radiant hollyhocks, spiring up into gay 
minarets, that wave in the light and the breeze and 
keep hovering about them a cloud of butterflies, 
humming-birds, and bees. They were favorites of 
"Wordsworth, who had, as Margaret Fuller tells us, 
a long avenue of them, of all colors, from the 
common brown to rose, straw-color, and white, 
and who pleased himself with making his neigh- 
bors admire them also. We remember the tall 
hollyhocks in a certain fine picture, called " The 
Home of the Bees,^"* and the rich background 
they make for the sunny hive ; only the Da- 
nish artist has robbed them of half their beauty 
by painting them double, so that their petals dis- 
close no shading off of rich hues at the base, but 
hide completely the clustered stamens rising, like 
tiny candlesticks, upright and burning, in the cen- 
tre of their silk-hung halls. In their mania for 
doubling flowers, gardeners would fain spoil our 
tulips and lilies, and all bell-shaped, beaker-like 
forms, whose beauty lies in a hollow cup and grace- 
ful filaments. Poppies, too, are under the ban of 
fashion; but what reigning favorite can show their 



OLD-FISUWNEB FLOJFERS. 113 

glowing varied colors, as they stand nodding to- 
gether in " such a jocund company/^ with their 
crimped petals fringed deep and fine, darkly 
spotted at their base, and ready at every wind- 
stir to shower down like flakes of bright snow ? 

What is to become of that pretty sentimentality, 
the language of flowers, by whicli every leaf and 
blossom sent from a friend seems to bear a secret 
message to our hearts? Tlie old familiar blossoms 
are the only ones that have been endowed with this 
recognized speech. It will be long before amorous 
lads and lassies can attach tender meanings to a 
wigelia, or fancy that bashful compliments find 
expression in a spray of dielytra or a deutzia-bud. 
These latinized titles smack of books and scholarly 
disquisitions, and are not such as endear them- 
selves to the common heart. When the taste for 
tulips shall have died out, not only from Holland 
but from all lands, and their glowing cups no 
longer swing over our garden-beds, will a lover 
pluck a handful of thuubergia to whisper to his 
mistress that she has beautiful eyes, or utter his 
incipient passion in gloxinias and gerardias ? If 



114 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

an atmosphere of sentiment and fond association 
is ever to gather about these strangers^, it must be 
created by that poet of the future who shall be mi- 
raculously skilled to make of our prosaic railroads, 
steamboats, and telegraph-poles worthy themes for 
a new-born muse. 

We ought to rejoice that this fashion in flowers 
prevails only within yard-palings, and that the 
fickle goddess can issue no decrees to the deni- 
zens of field and wood. Outside the narrow, culti- 
vated domains of which she takes cognizance still 
flourish the pretty tribes who were contemporary 
with King Philip and his men, and who knew, 
doubtless, that elder race which vanished before 
them. AVild-oats and wind-flowers, pond-lilies 
and pickerel-weed, are lineal descendants of the 
blossoms that Indian girls braided into raven 
tresses centuries ago. No foreign invaders have 
dispossessed them of their soil, and white face 
and red man have proved alike to them. 

Their names and haunts remain unknown to 
most of their human neighbors ; for few are they 
who care ^^to learn the secret of a weed's plain 



OLD-FASHIONED FLOfVERS. 115 

heart/^ When field-flowers come repeated in 
artificial forms from Paris, the votaries of fashion 
first awaken to their grace and beauty. Then they 
discover the charm of our wild ox-eyed daisies, 
the immortelles of modistes, with their white rays 
set around broad golden hearts, making beautiful 
the fields which they have overrun to the regret 
of the haymakers. Bearded wheat, sunny butter- 
cups, and brier roses are found to be passing fair 
when embodied in painted muslin and nodding 
from W'ire stems. Among these French field-flowers 
that our belles so much affect, three at least seem 
interlopers to American eyes. We reckon no 
scarlet poppies among our weeds; but it is in 
England and France that they sow themselves 
among the grains, leading Keats to jjicture Au- 
tumn as lying 

" On a half-reaped furrow fast asleep, 
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath, and all its twined flowers." 

The bachelor^s-button clustered Avith them is the 
blue, corn-flower of other lands, but is not native 
to our soil. No spade of ours ever turns up the 



116 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

crimson-tipped daisy over which Burns so sweetly 
lamented, and w^e must needs shelter it as a house- 
plant if w^e would see it flourish ; but English 
grass is dotted w^th its modest bloom, as abun- 
dant there as the many-rayed dandelion in our 
transatlantic fields. 

It is only because wild-flowers are so com- 
mon that we are blinded to their charms. We 
forget that the cherished shrubs and aimuals of 
our gardens are only the weeds of distant coun- 
tries, and that flowers, like prophets, have no honor 
in their own land. At home, like other wild 
tribes, they flourish best when un tended and un- 
noticed, and need then no spaded beds or con- 
stant care. Transported across the seas, they put 
on fine airs and become dainty exotics. Then all 
vulgar groAvth must be cleared aw^ay from their 
presence ; they require a sunny exposure, regular 
shower-baths, and plenty of watchful admirers to 
feed them with compliments. After such coax- 
ing they condescend to spread their petals and 
exhale their perfumes as best they may, but they 
are homesick at heart. Stunted and feeble, they 



OLD-FASHIONED FLOIFERS. 117 

seem to dream in their exile of the torrid suns, 
the warm, loose earth, and the native thickets 
that they left behind. The cactus longs througli 
all its ugly stems for Mexican wilds, and says, 
while opening its rosy cup and drooping within it 
an exquisite tassel of threadlike stamens, '^ Yes, 
this is fine ; but it is nothing to what I can do if 
you will but place me in my beloved tropics, and 
let me hear my praises in the sweet Spanish 
tongue/^ The Norway pine dwindles on Ohio 
lawns, though held more precious than all the 
buckeyes and sycamores in the surrounding for- 
ests ; and in the sough of its branches it pleads for 
drifting snows, and bleak coasts that are drenched 
with sleety rains and swept by blasts from the 
northern sea. 

Although Fashion devotes herself to nursing 
these foreign visitors, the blossoms of our wood- 
lands will not lack for admirers while poets, 
botanists, and bees exist. Some there may be to 
study them with the ardor of a Thoreau, though 
none shall watch them with such keen and sympa- 
thetic eyes. When he died they lost, indeed, their 



118 BROWSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

most devoted lover; and it must be that their 
spring-time is less joyous^ since he comes no more 
to bid them welcome on their opening morning. 

Study them as we may, we can read but a few 
of their secrets. They have freaks and fancies for 
which we can never account; and they will answer 
to nobody^s beck and call. We cannot tell why 
New Hampshire woods should be full of noble 
chestnut-trees, and their long, serrated leaves and 
rough burrs rarely show themselves in Maine ; 
nor why the mayflower, which abounds in both 
those States, is so shy of the Massachusetts shore, 
loving Plymouth and a few towns, but consenting 
on no account to set its feet in the neighborhood 
of Boston. Where, during many years, are hidden 
the seeds of the fireweed, whose flaming spikes 
first start to life when a woodland has been burnt 
to the ground? A queenly rhododendron thrives 
in a Standish swamp in Maine, but grows nowhere 
else in the region ; so that pilgrimages are made 
to its birthplace, and its clusters are brought 
many miles to grace Portland drawing-rooms. In 
the woods between Gloucester and Manchester, in 



OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS. 119 

Massachusetts, may be found a magnolia of rare 
fragrance, differing from its namesake of the South, 
and seeming to choose that spot out of all New 
England for its abiding-place. Whittier has 
praised the Kalmia latifolia of the Merrimac 
banks; and all have heard of the famous laurtd 
parties, made year by year in honor of the flower 
and its poet. The strange pitcher-plant, and the 
maidenhair fern, with the clean polish of its stems 
and the grace of its feathery leaflets, take kindly 
to the hanging baskets of our parlors ; but they 
are nice in their choice of localities, and, like those 
ghostly Indian-pipes that seem led upon terrene 
draughts of milk and ink, are rarely visible in the 
recesses of our woods. We have seen . harebells, 
blue and pendulous, on many a mountain-side, but 
never dreamed of what they were capable, till one 
day, strolling over the island of Mackinaw, we 
stumbled upon a nook all awave with their pretty 
cups, and as blue with them as if a bit of the sky 
had fallen. They were of such size and beauty 
that we knew ever after where was their happy 
land; and then we pitied the shivering little crea- 



120 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

tares that were fighting fate and adverse winds 
upon the White Mountain slopes, instead of ex- 
panding generously in their paradise between the 
clear waters of two northern lakes. Southern 
flowers are richer in color, those of colder climes 
in perfume. It must be when nearing northern 
lands that the sea-worn mariner scents odors from 
distant fields. Some peculiar virtue is imparted 
to herbs when they bloom at great heights ; and 
Trench pharmacists advertise their simples as 
grown upon the summits of the Jura. , 

Poets and women have always loved flowers, 
for nature has made them not only more sensitive 
to beauty but more observant than the rest of 
mankind. English verse is filled with praises of 
the old-fashioned favorites of our gardens, now so 
rapidly disappearing ; and these flowers are the 
dearer to us because of the many tender-hearted 
bards who have cherished them in other days and 
sung to them undying honors. Shakspeare's dramas 
abound in portraitures of their varied loveliness, 
which show that the poet who knew all things best, 
knew liovv to paint their delicate charms and to in- 



OLD-FASHWNED FLOWERS. 121 



terpret their mute language. We recall dainty 
images of their beauty in Milton's minor poems; 
and his " pansy freaked with jet^'' must occur to 
every lover of that flower^ as fresh and true a phrase 
as Keats^s " sweet-pea on tip-toe for a flightJ^ 
Several poets have associated their names with some 
special favorite. The daisy will ever remind us of 
Burns; Wordsworth's cloud of daffodils can never 
fade while his works endure; and Shelley's sensi- 
tive-plant lies embalmed in his most musical verse. 
Lowell^ like the brave American that he is, 
sings generous praises to the dandelion; Aldrich 
weaves his warm Eastern fancies around tiger-lilies; 
and Bryant has made illustrious the fringed 
gentian and the yellow violet, shy dwellers by the 
borders of our damp woods. The regal cardinal- 
flower, which hangs its scarlet fringes over our 
brooks in September, planting its feet upon the 
very edge of the waterfall and lighting the whole 
leaf-hidden nook with its torch, has never yet been 
sung as it deserves; neither has the pale, starry 
clematis, whose clusters crown the wayside hedges, 
and swing their tendrilled sprays from the elm- 



122 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

boughs overhead. These shall endure^ for nature 
protects them, and they can wait for their poet. 
But the garden favorites depart ; and as we now 
wonder what was that hyacinth of the Greeks 
upon whose petals were writ the wof ul ^^Ai, ai ! '' of 
the dying quoit-player, and have at best but a 
faint idea of the rosemary and rue, the stocks and 
eglantine, of earlier bards, so the generations that 
succeed us may read of marigolds and pinks, holly- 
hocks and poppies, as of races tliat have vanished 
from our soil, leaving behind them only a dim tra- 
dition and immortal praises. 



COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS. 



OOME few things on this mundane sphere must 
ever remain mysteries to the finite mind; and 
of these the origin of the term ^' College Commence- 
ment " appears to be one. Why that which is in 
reality an end should be formally proclaimed as a 
beginning can only be explained as a part of that 
preference for sound and bluster over simple sense 
which the use of this sonorous word implies, and 
which marks more than one proceeding of the 
closing days at college. A more exact designa- 
tion might, perhaps, have been expected of learned 
bodies who make the nice meaning of terms a 
specialty; but then the profane and ignorant public 
should be thankful that the occasion is christened 



124 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

in plain English, wliicli they can at least pro- 
nounce, if they may not comprehend. 

Time was when Commencement Day was as 
good as a muster to the region roundabout, and 
only second in attraction to a travelling circus. 
Then farmers left their hoes in the field, and 
farmers' wives forsook milkpans and churns, and 
started off at dawn with iheir enger families, that 
they might have the whole day for hanging about 
the college grounds. They looked in occasionally 
at the church, where dignitaries sat in perspir- 
ing state behind swaying palm-leaves, but their 
energies were chiefly devoted to the attendant 
glories without. Those were the days when the 
governor and the military came in glittering 
array, with brass bands before and brass bands 
behind, and rows of awe-struck boys gaping 
along the route; when straggling side-shows 
tempted from many tents and shanties, and pop- 
beer and gingerbread, dispensed at open stalls, 
kept the thirsting, hungry crowds alive ; when the 
soldiers, dismissed at the church, went capering 
past, like '' wanton troopers riding by," and a 



COLLEGE C0M31ENCEMENTS. 125 

series of small scuffles and accidents could always 
be counted on to vary the lagging hours. But^ 
alas ! the glory of Ichabod has departed ; the 
roads no longer swarm with well-filled wagons ; 
the groups assembling at the college are mostly 
sedate and elderly men ; frolicsome lads and las- 
sies have vanished from the green ; and save the 
fitful swell of impassioned eloquence that pours 
through open windows, there is nothing to show 
that Learning is holding high carnival in her ven- 
erable halls. 

Class Day is accused of havin£( wrous^ht 

J Do 

this change to its own advantage; but it has 
borrowed no features from the past; and if it 
attracts the greater crowds, it is because the 
amusement it furnishes is of the more original 
sort. Hangers-on and wandering showmen once 
made the hilarities of Commencement ; but the 
managers of Class Day need no such outside help, 
for they have set up as their own clowns and 
mountebanks_, and can defy competition. 

Class Day stands as the newly ordained festival 
of an order of students who have heretofore had 



126 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

no lot or part in the literary exercises of gradua- 
tion. Tliese last were established and regulated 
by the sage authorities of the college; and only 
those who had been good boys and conned dili- 
gently their books during the preceding years were 
suffered to make their bow before admiring friends. 
Now Chaucer tells us that at Oxford in his day 
there were the clerks who loved their books^, and 
there were those who cared only for sporting and 
fine apparel; and human nature during the lapse of 
five hundred years seems to have made but little 
headway. The great number of young men who 
now^ step from our colleges with a plenty of money 
and a paucity of brains^ and who have led, for the 
most part, a roistering life in those academic shades, 
giving their jirecious days to boating, racing, 
and ball-play, while cutting recitations and dodg- 
ing tutors, have felt, on leaving the scene of their 
exploits, that it was rather hard to be obliged to 
take the back seats and let the hard-headed old 
plodders sail in with all the honors. Here was too 
jolly a chance for display; and, with plenty of 
friends and resources, their obscure condition was 



COLLEGE C0M31ENCEMENTS. 127 

not to be endured. They took matters into their 
own hands and devised Class Day ; and thence- 
forward they set to work to make it splendid 
with gorgeous spreads, dancing, merry-making, 
ridiculous costumes, howling, scrambles, and the 
whole pow-wow of its established rowdyisms. 
Since externals and noise always carry the day 
with the young, it has won to itself the favor of 
fair maidens, and forced brave men to smile ap- 
proval. Everything and everybody has at length 
been pressed into its service ; and even the digni- 
fied, slow Commencement has been hurried up for 
a good month, that it may become linked Avith the 
new festival, and with it form a timely and fitting 
close to the collegiate career. One day, then, of 
Commencement week, is to be sacred ever after to 
fun, jollity, and exaggerated nonsense ; the corpo- 
ration and faculty agreeing to look on with infi- 
nite condescension, as becomes a body of Solons 
when engaged in superintending the gambols of 
high-spirited young savages. 

Whoever would see Boston^s dowagers at their 
acme of resplendent attire and radiant smiles, her 



123 BROJrsiNG AMONG BOOKS. 

damsels in their most ravishing toilettes^ and her 
gilded youth in their blackest broadcloths and 
yellowest kids, all borne along in shallow, boat-like 
barouches under arching elms and a cloudless sky, 
must wend his way toward Harvard on Class Day 
afternoon ; and should he chance to behold the 
dancing in its open hall he will believe that 
he lias wandered into Arcady, where Corydon and 
Phyllis are leading up the Lancers to the sound 
of timbrel and lute. But an hour later^ if he 
looks over those yard-palings, he will see the 
Phyllises, the matrons, and all weak and infirm 
persons removed to a safe distance, and the Cory- 
dons transformed into such leaping, howling fig- 
ures that he shall wonder whether they be Bowery 
roughs out on a festive lark, or a set of enthused 
young Hottentots performing their religious rites. 
Strange are the yells and horrible the incantations 
that come floating to him then on the summer air 
from that college yard ; and did he not know that 
it took four years of special devotion to logarith- 
mic tables, Greek aorists, chemical formulas, 
and theological theses to produce such results, he 



COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS. 129 

might be tempted to pity their unfortunate con- 
dition. 

Such, to the casual observer, is Class Day, — 
the chief attraction of Commencement week ; for 
though other exercises vary the first few days, 
they are of little interest to the general public. 
After this there comes the slow-paced, venerable 
Commencement Day, when as many of the graduat- 
ing class as may be alive and in moderate posses- 
sion of their faculties appear in public procession, 
and with grave faces and staid demeanor, walk 
behind their instructors and earthly rulers to the 
village church, which they enter to slow music and 
with suspended breath. All trace of the hyena and 
the South Sea Islander has departed, or lies de- 
cently latent under the white vests that spread so 
immaculately over their manly bosoms. They feel 
themselves about to join that great army of the 
alumni who have been in session in the town since 
early morning, if they did not assemble at their 
annual meeting the evening before, not edifying 
each other, as heretofore, by relating their boyish 
pranks, but discussiug, as the rumor runs, certain 
9 



130 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

bold, revolutionary projects concerning college 
management, the very suspicion of which sets the 
president and faculty shuddering with cold tre- 
mors, and the elderly divines, who constitute in 
part the corporate body, clutching their gold cane- 
heads with unwonted grip. 

According to present arrangements, but few 
things are needed to make Commencement Day a 
success. The heavens appear invariably to smile 
on these occasions, and to beam their warmest 
approval upon the scene. Certain annual celebra- 
tions always brhig upon us certain weather. No 
one can doubt that if we had three months of con- 
tinuous Fast Days, Musters, and Religious Anni- 
versary weeks, we should experience a second 
deluge ; and that if college festivals were strung 
along, one after the other, to the very edge of the 
dog-days, we should be afflicted with a season of 
tropical heats, compared to which the rays of the 
baleful Sirius would promise a relief. It is proba- 
bly out of regard to a scorched and suffering world 
that these festivals have been condensed into one 
week of early summer ; and once having passed 



COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS. 131 

this brief period of oppressive languor we may 
hope to see the mercury drop now and then below 
the hissing nineties. 

Good weather being relied upon, the first requi- 
site in arranging Commencement exercises is mani- 
festly to secure the attendance of some attractive 
lion, perhaps a stray major-general, at all odds the 
governor, and any otlier dignitary of titled condi- 
tion who may happen to be travelling in the neigh- 
borhood. These, and the goodly number of the 
alumni which the fresh interest awakened in our 
colleges during the past few years is sure to bring, 
enable the trustees, faculty, and orating graduates 
to take their seats upon the stage at the appointed 
hour, confident that all will be well. After the 
Latin salutatory, to which everybody listens with 
an air of breathless interest, and, let us hope, 
with inward satisfaction, to its close, the audience 
lapses into a state of semi-stupefaction, induced 
by the heat and the steady flow of sounding 
periods, which even frantic appeals to the spirit of 
liberty, the memory of our fathers, the late war, 
aud the future of the republic fail to dispel. 



132 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

Ladies brighten up at tlie advent of each new 
aspirant^ as he appears in fauUless swallow-tail 
coat, lavender necktie, and ambrosial locks, re- 
solved, it would seem, to personate Beau Brum- 
mel and Daniel Webster rolled into one ; and 
coquettish maidens single out the most attractive 
for audacious flirting in the very face and eyes of 
the State authorities, and even turn upon tlie latter 
the batteries of their smiling glances when other 
victims fail. At last, however, the maidens steal 
out of doors for a stroll with rambling members 
of tlie class, whose names, by a mysterious ar- 
rangement which their friends cannot explain, 
fiiil to appear on the programme, though they are 
known to be transformed into some strange Caro- 
lus or Guilielmus in a roll of parchment that lies 
awaiting each graduate at the president's right 
hand. More heroic souls sit through the philo- 
sophical orations, the forensic disputations, and 
all the other ponderous and oppressive titles with 
which somebody christens on the bills the compo- 
sitions of these fledgling orators ; and in which 
said fledglings give indisputable proof that they 



COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS. 133 

have swept through all history, sacred and profane, 
are up on the wars of the Tartars, have the Zenda- 
vesta at their tongues' end, and survey the whole 
range of temporal aflairs wdth the calm, grand out- 
look of an elevated stoic. The showers of bou- 
quets that thump the toes of these retiring heroes 
prove that somewhere before them bright eyes are 
awake and aware of the progress of events. When 
the last candidate for irregular honors has followed 
the valedictorian, when the degrees have been dis- 
tributed, and several honorary initials conferred 
upon those whose favor the college wishes to 
secure, and who will consent to the infliction, a 
line of march is taken up for the dining-hall ; and 
there, after the protracted fast, w^e picture them 
all as seated in solemn conclave, transformed into a 
closed avenue of rapacious cormorants, and bent 
only on devouring whatever flesh and fowl may come 
in their way. As no foot of woman is sufl'ered at 
such times to step into their august presence, we 
hazard this as a mere fancy sketch. But we know 
from hearsay that the president is able to rise 
afterward and relate in the blandest manner the 



134 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

benefactions that Alma Mater has received during 
the past year, to direct urgent appeals for addi- 
tional funds to the plethoric pockets before him, 
and to pour at the last^ as best he may^ concilia- 
tory oil on the rising antagonisms of alumni and 
trustees. Other speeches follow, and there is an 
end. 

The reception in the evening brings to the young 
orators the compliments of female friends, and 
affords the latter a chance to display their loveliest 
attire ; and what greater bliss is possible to youth- 
ful liearts ? 

Thus passes Commencement Day ; and thus 
passes a new group of educated, ambitious young 
men, the flower and hope of the land, out over the 
threshold to face the sober relations of life. 



LUXURIES. 



"D EDUCE the necessaries of life to their lo^yest 
terms, and you find but two or three sub- 
stances essential to continued existence. Air, 
water, food, — these three will suffice, in any hos- 
pitable clime, for keeping the inner fires steadily 
burning. Yet so dependent has civilization made 
us that we accept all its common productions as 
indispensable to our needs, and reckon as luxuries 
only the things which are at present rare and diffi- 
cult to obtain. These will vary for every one 
according to the circumstances that surround 
him, and they will comprise what he chiefly lacks. 
The witty philosopher who exclaims, "Give me 
the luxuries of life, and I will do without its 



136 BROlfSING J3IGNG BOOKS. 

necessities/^ knows very well that the wants of 
another can be no criterion for his own. 

Commerce and the arts tend to multiply all new 
and rare objects^ and thus the luxuries of one age 
become the necessaries of the next. Carpets and 
chimneys belong now to every cottage; but Queen 
Elizabeth herself had to sweep her ermined trains 
over rush-strewn floors, and the noblemen of her 
land once sat blinking in smoke that curled along 
the rafters with no chance of escape. We subsist 
on what were the delicacies of our forefathers^ 
tables. The potato was first stared at as a curious 
tuber from South American wilds ; and tea was 
sipped at great entertainments, Iavo hundred years 
ago, as the rarest and costliest of drinks. We 
remember that nails and pins had their day of 
value, when we see in old houses the floor-boards 
fastened down with wooden pegs, and when we 
consider that pin-money meant the greater part of 
the expense of the toilet. Only in the galleries 
of the rich were formerly preserved the portraits 
of beloved friends, but now the sun sketches them 
for the poorest laborer ; chromos reproduce the 



LUXURIES. 137 



lines and color of rare paintings for his walls^ and 
the stereoscope brings before him the truest sem- 
blance of distant and unvisited scenes. Thus the 
modern arts which science creates seem ingenious 
inventions by which luxuries may be multiplied 
and cheapened. What has not chemistry already 
done to give comfort to our daily lives, and what 
may it not do in the future ? 

So rapidly have luxuries increased during the 
past few years that we w^onder what new marvels 
shall be furnished to the ages that come after. 
Will an experimenter succeed at last in manufac- 
turing pears and peaches out of their elementary 
ingredients, so that fresh fruit may be made to 
order in midwinter ? Will balloons be regulated, 
and air-travelling rendered practicable, so that 
each man shall keep a balloon hitched to a stake 
by his door-step, and horses and boats be there- 
after superfluous ? Will one immense electric light 
on a lofty tower illuminate the city at night, 
and one vast umbrella, swung aloft, shade it by 
day ? Vain is it to forecast the doings of this in- 
genious creature, man. The wildest speculations 



138 BnOWSTNCr AMONG BOOKS. 

might soon read like prosaic statements of fact ; as 
Ariel's girdle shadowed forth the actual achieve- 
ments of the modern telegraph. 

Our present luxuries are of two kinds, those 
intended merely for display, and those which con- 
tribute to actual comfort. The former are con- 
demned by moralists as part of the pomjis and 
vanities which sober minds should despise. Yet 
in pleasing the sight they minister to the least 
gross and material of the senses. That love of 
beauty which they seek to gratify underlies all our 
efforts to give charm and refinement to life, and 
leads to that longing for perfection which is the 
saving of us all. Nature's varied colorings of 
cloud and plumage, foliage and bloom, are but 
pomps and vanities in which she delights; and 
shall w^e, her children, reared amid her symmetries, 
fail to admire whatever about us is comely and 
elegant ? We think with pleasure of Cleopatra as 
sweeping gayly along the Nile under the sheen of 
silken sails, and esteem Mary of Scotland none 
the less devout because she would read her prayers 
only from a missal bound in velvet and clasped 
with gold. 



LUXURIES. 139 



These braveries of the sight are prized in our 
early years, while the luxuries that minister to 
bodily ease become the favorites of age. Then 
life, to be endurable, must be softly padded with 
creature comforts and spiced with delicate dnin- 
ties. The youth finds breathing and moving luxu- 
ries enough, and scorns external aids, as the weak 
indulgences of a Sybarite. Give him the open 
sky, pathless woods, a good rifle and prospective 
game, and he welcomes a bed of broken boughs 
and a dewy canopy of stars. By and by his love 
of adventure vanishes before a fear of rheumatic 
twinges, and he remembers the nights he spent 
sud Jove as the escapades of folly. Nothing now 
can win him from a couch of down, warm cover- 
lets, and a house-door securely bolted. 

It is the common belief that luxuries tend to 
enervate the character. Historians trace the 
effeminacy and fall of Carthage to her wide com- 
merce and the induls^ences it brou2;ht, and find 
the source of Spartans martial glory in the austere 
and rigorous training of her children. On the 
poet^s page, the land of delights is always the land 



140 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

of sloth ; and the men who eat lotus never figure 
as heroes or saints. Milton assigns the crown of 
bays to him who " scorns delights, and lives labo- 
rious days/' and an older and greater bard than he 
warns us that the sirens who sing so sweetly from 
purple islands would fain lure us to our ruin, 
and that our only safety is to turn a deaf ear, 
and go laboring by through the chill, opposing 
surge. It is obviously true that wrestling with dif- 
ficulties gives tone and firmness to the mind. The 
ship-builder selects for his mast the oak that has 
grown upon the sea-coast, and hardened there to 
a compact, unyielding fibre, in its battle with 
storm and wind ; and we look for strength and 
endurance in the character that has kept up a 
daily contest with fate. 

Yet in a life of ease, the fairest material 
paradise will not content the soul that has once 
been made susceptible to nobler influences and 
ambitions. External beauty and the appliances 
of art cannot pamper the body unless the spirit 
has been starved. The wealtli of life without 
does not work the liarm, but the poverty of life 



LUXURIES. 141 



within. A love of generous daring, a desire for 
mental and moral excellence, will give incentive 
for effort, and develop difficulties which the aids 
of wealth are powerless to remove. We may 
delight the sense with costly viands and draughts 
of nectar, but '"'^the thirst that in the soul doth 
rise doth ask a drink divine.'^ 

No nation on the earth consumes so many luxu- 
ries as our own. The 7iil admirari doctrine forms 
no part of American philosophy. Palaces are 
none too good for our houses, nor the vesture of 
kings for our daily wear ; the oceans are white 
with our sails, sent out in quest of the delicacies 
of every land; we keep the looms of Europe busy, 
weaving velvets and silks, and drain her markets 
of diamonds. Yet these expensive imports are 
sought for a nation of earnest workers, toiling as 
no nation ever toiled before. The humblest of 
our people desires for himself the best that the 
world can offer, and finds in tliis desire his 
motive to strive. If we had feared something 
of the effeminacy of Carthage as the result of 
such a dainty-seeking commerce, the first out- 



142 BROWSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

break of our late war convinced us tliat other 
tilings still remained dearer than traffic and dalli- 
ance, and that the young men who had given 
their days to workshops and counting-rooms 
needed but a bugle-call to transform them into 
heroes. 

We are beginning, however, to reap some of 
the evil fruits of a too extravagant life. Families 
of the best and most cultivated of our people, 
those whom we need in our own communities, are 
departing by hundreds to foreign cities, exiling 
themselves from country and friends that they 
may enjoy the pleasures they prize without this 
necessity of ostentatious and burdensome display. 
Those who remain behind gladly escape in summer 
from elegant mansions to simple country retreats ; 
and so readily do their epicurean tastes accustom 
themselves to the little, bare cottages, and such 
comfort do they appear to take in hard chairs at 
frugal tables, that we question whether this luxuri- 
ous, complicated housekeeping is not after all a 
bore, kept up, like European armaments, solely 
because one wishes to know himself to be on an 



LUXURIES. 143 



equal footing with his neighbors. If a general 
reduction could be agreed upon, society would no 
doubt experience a sense of relief. Yenetian 
ladies probably enjoyed themselves more in tlie 
black-painted gondolas which the law of tlie re- 
public finally enjoined upon all, than when they 
made the Grand Canal gorgeous with their splen- 
did rivalries. The supreme satisfaction of know- 
ing that otliers could not possibly outshine them 
must have compensated for the loss of their 
brighter surroundings. 

Of the real luxuries that conduce to health, ease, 
and even to beauty, we cannot have too many; and 
we trust tliat every year will bring an increase 
of such enjoyments to the poorest dwellings. Our 
only danger lies in not making them subordinate 
to higher, more enduring pleasures. Because 
riches are needed to procure them, we seem ready 
to abandon all other duties, and the pursuit of 
all other blessings, in a mad chase after wealth. 
When Agassiz declared that he had no time to 
spend in making money, he uttered Avhat few of 
his adopted countrymen could comprehend. But 



144 BROWSING A310NG BOOKS. 

in taking thought for what we shall eat and what 
we shall drink and wherewithal we shall be 
clothed, let us not forget that the life is more 
than meat and the body than raiment. 



SMALL-TALK ONE OF THE FINE 
AETS. 



\ LTHOUGH talk in different forms has always 
been one of the chief agencies that rule the 
world, its influence was never greater than at the 
present time. This arises partly from the repub- 
lican character which modern governments tend 
more and more to assume, since the persuasion of 
public speakers becomes the most effective means 
for moulding into harmony the diverse wills of 
the people ; and partly from an increasing respect 
for that mental culture which reveals itself most 
clearly in the lofty thoughts and ready expression 
of a polished orator. In our admiration of his 
burning eloquence, the valiant deeds of silent 
heroes are forgotten. Ulysses still wins the sliield 
from Ajax; the man of plausible argument out- 
10 



146 BROirSING AMONG BOOKS. 

Avits the mighty wielder of spears and battle-axes. 
AYe send to our legislative halls the men who can 
harangue^ and know not whether they be wise or 
foolish, reckless or judicious. There they sit, mak- 
ing speeclies at each other day after day, voting in 
the intervals upon hiws and regulations, according 
as the eloquence of defenders or opponents prevails. 
If they show themselves skilled in debate, grand 
in declamation, effective in retort, their constit- 
uents are satisfied, and enroll them among the 
statesmen of whom the country is proud. 
/ It is a common saying that man is distinguished 
\ from the brute by his noble gift of speech ; but in 
this we are assuming altogether too much. We call 
all animals dumb, and imply a certain pity in the 
word ; but in some native language of their own 
they may be calling us likewise poor dumb crea- 
tures, and commiserating our inability to frame 
their speech. The sounds they utter, which are 
unintelligible to us, and which we are content to 
describe as crowing, cackling, neighing, mewing, 
chirping, barking, may be the articulated words of 
unwritten dialects, in which each different species 



SMALL-TALK. Ui 



finds expression for its thoughts and desires. 
Who ever heard a flock of ducks quacking to- 
gether, as they waddled along in single file toward 
a pond, without being convinced that they were 
holding sweet and earnest converse by the way ? 
Who can listen to a quarrel between martins and 
swallows in early spring, before some besieged and 
airy domicile, and believe that all their vociferous 
chatter is meaningless to them ? It is evident that 
they are calling each other feathered rascals and 
villains, and are dealing out threats and objurga- 
tions in epithets that their hearers do not mistake. 
The deep-voiced frogs, croaking through all the 
country-side under the starlight and dews, may 
be gurgling tender serenades, in their cold-blooded 
fashion, to lady-loves beneath the waves, although 
Aristophanes failed to translate tliem into his 
rough Greek. When we come upon a solemn 
company of crows that have settled on the tall tree 
of a lonely wood, we stop to listen to their hoarse 
notes, in full faith that much meaning is carried 
in such sepulchral tones, and that they have 
halted there to discuss their prospects, and to 



148 BBOirSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

deterniine upon a plan for the next campaign. 
Or, for auglit we know, they may be repeating the 
substance of that fine old English ballad, which tells 
us how three of their race sat on a tree, debating 
where they should dine, when one of them related 
that in a lonesome glen a noble knight lay freshly 
slain, and then summoned them all to a banquet on 
his white neck and " bonny blue een," adding 
that the " golden down on his young chin would 
do to wrap their young ones m/' 

These birds have, it may be, their favorite orators, 
who are versed in all tricks of stump-speaking, 
and sway at will the less gifted of their kind. 
But until they invent writing for themselves, 
and an alphabet, and furnisli us with a skilled in- 
terpreter, we shall have to call their elocpience and 
their small-talk the veriest jargon. We find our 
])leasure in the sweet warbling of merrier birds ; 
since music and laughter, in which these joyous 
little souls delight, are the only utterances that 
possess a universal and unvarying speech. We 
understand them at once, as we do a Frenchman 
or Chinaman when he laughs or sneezes, whistles 



SMALL-TALK. 149 



or cries. If Mother Nature speaks directly, her 
cliiklren need never run for their dictionaries. 

The talk of human beings, which is thus far the 
only talk with which we are at all conversant, may 
be divided into two classes, oratory aud conver- 
sation. In the former, one acts as autocrat amoug 
his hearers, and pours forth burning eloquence or 
convincing argument without comment or hiterrup- 
tion. Conversation is the familiar, intimate com- 
munion of a few, without, it may be, any purpose 
to influence or please. Here one no longer rules ; 
all are allowed equal rights for suggestion or reply. 
If oratory is absolutism in sj^eech, the latter par- 
takes of the nature of democracy. 

Among uneducated people conversation hns a 
tendency to degenerate into gossip; since they 
feel no interest in matters that do not concern 
their actual daily life, whatever transpires beyond 
their own village and their oavu set of acquaint- 
ances seems remote and unimportant. The trilling 
acts of their neighbors are scanned and consid- 
ered with as much attention as the world gives 
to the formal address of a powerful sovereign. 



150 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

Ill such communities tlie inhabitants resolve them- 
selves into a secret council, before which the actions 
of every one must be brought. It does not give a 
favorable view of human nature, and yet it is true 
tliat every person on trial before them is supposed 
to be guilty till he is proved to be innocent. This 
proof, moreover, must always be adduced in his ab- 
sence; the court sits only when liis back is turned; 
and, far from adopting the French method of 
allowing him to testify in liis own defence, it never 
informs him when his case is to come up, or, indeed, 
that any case has been preferred against him. If 
witnesses appear in liis behalf, they must come 
without summoning and of their own free will. The 
final decision is made known to all except to the 
one most interested, for care is taken to render the 
verdict when he is out of court. This system 
of procedure justly makes gossip appear to honest 
minds mean, cowardly, and uncharitable ; and yet, 
such is the keen attention it excites, the edge and 
flavor of its personalities, the relish for its wild 
surmises, that all save the best are tempted to in- 
dulge in it. 



SMALL-TALK. 151 



Perhaps the minister's wife is the greatest suf- 
ferer from these secret tribmials^ these Star Cham- 
bers that are set up in all small villages ; for^, iu 
the opinion of her sex^ she can never succeed in 
performing a proper or praiseworthy act. And yet 
the current notion that women are peculiarly ad- 
dicted to gossip is a slander that has too long 
been received. Were any painter given this sub- 
ject for his canvas, he would without doubt por- 
tray three old crones bending over the tea-table, 
with heads in close conjunction, and fingers lifted 
to enforce emphasis and enjoin silence. But this 
is only one half the picture. A companion piece 
sliould represent the interior of a country grocery 
store, where, among barrels of flour and piles 
of salt fish, more gossip is talked in one evening 
by the assembled crowd of customers than is 
heard in all the farm-houses of the town. Their 
neighbor's crops, his hired men, the weight of his 
hogs, the vegetables he sends to market, the tax 
he pays the minister, the state of his fences, — all 
are commented on in his absence with eager inter- 
est. In large cities the sight and the mind are 



152 BROWSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

occupied by so many objects that gossip declines, 
and one cares not even to read the door-plate on the 
adjoining house. But wherever people are curious, 
idle, and ignorant, whether in town or country, 
gossip will always engross a large share of their 
speech. 

But neither oratory, sustained conversation, nor 
gossip answers the purpose for which small-talk 
exists. The latter has a province of its own; it ^ 
furnishes the means of intercourse to a large and 
mixed assemblage of people, where speeches would 
be out of place, and continuous discourse impossi- 
ble. It allows no flights of eloquence like oratory, 
no unbroken train of ideas like conversation, no 
personal animadversions like gossip; but shifts 
and glances and sparkles, touching lightly on 
every theme and holding fast to none. Its object 
is to keep all minds alert but not intent, and to 
enliven society by an airy grace and playfulness that 
shall relieve it for a while of the weight and strain 
of serious duties. It expresses no wants, sub- 
serves no material purpose ; and it is possible only 
in a polite assembly, brought together in leisurely 



SMALL-TALK. 153 



elegance for the mere interchange of general good- 
will. It may, therefore, be properly classed among 
the fine arts. We can conceive of savages ex- 
horting each other in glowing harangues, and 
indulging in personal slanders, but small-talk 
would be beyond their power to use or to compre- 
hend. Men of serious thought give it the con- 
temptuous name it bears, and affect to treat it 
with disdain, because it listens to no lengthy specu- 
lations and pays sliglit homage to their grand ideas. 
They stigmatize it as the fit vehicle of those flat 
truisms and empty comments to wliich most minds 
are reduced by poverty and inaction. It may 
often require earnest thinkers, it is true, to give 
grain in exchange for chafi*; but its aim is to afford 
pleasure to all, not to benefit a few. 

Of all talk, it is in its nature the most demo- 
cratic. It allows su2:)erior intellects no tyranny, 
weak minds no silent submission, but summons all 
alike to a share in its control. No man so wise or 
so brilliant that he may engross its opportunities, no 
egotist so self-involved that he may disregard its 
swift-sent rephes. Hobbies are banished from its 



154 BROnSING AMONG BOOKS. 

sphere ; the philosopher nnds in it no chance to 
air his theories^ the reader his book-learning, the 
scientist his discoveries ; special advantages are 
waived, for all must meet on common ground in a 
perfect equality. 

Since small-talk adapts itself to the average 
intelligence, its themes are necessarily simple and 
general. It must remind no one of liis ignorance, 
or force another to apparent condescension. 
Its nature forbids argument and earnest discussion; 
hence it ignores the topics on which men cherish 
deep and various prejudices. Politics and religion 
are outlaws in its domain. It skips lightly over 
all such themes,, avoiding them with the ease and 
grace with which Migiion danced among the 
ecrijrs. 

Do 

Its train of thouglit must bend to every sug- 
gestion and adopt each last reply, making subse- 
quent sentences answer the hints and flashes tliat 
preceded. A steady course in it is possible to 
none ; every slight breeze that ruffles the sails re- 
quires a new^ tack. AVhat it loses in spicy inter- 
est, when compared with gossip, it must supply by 



SMALL-TALK. 155 



dash and piijuancy, keeping its bright sallies ever 
flying, like gilded balls tossed from the hand of 
an Indian jnggler. 

The Augustan age of smnll-talk is yet in the 
future. It is limited now to the mere trifles of 
daily life; but when the prevailing intelligence 
shall permit it to glance swiftly over all matters 
of art, nature, and social culture, it will become 
rich and suggestive^ and illumine with its light- 
ning flashes the whole extent of humnn interests. 
The common possession of tact — which is merely 
the name we give to the delicate imagination that 
can surmise another^s wishes, and furnish a ready 
means for indulging them — shall spare each man^s 
feelings from careless wounds. Quick, sympa- 
thetic intelligence, a mental sensitiveness to the 
nicest shades of thought^ shall catch the subtle 
meanings that lurk in the lift of an eyebrow, a 
wink, or the curl of a lip- corner, and fully seize 
the vanishing fancy. Playfulness and merry good- 
humor shall diffuse happiness by their sportive 
conceits ; shallow dulness will be impossible when 
wit condenses its sense and eloquence into a few 



156 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

telling words^ converting brief speeches into prov- 
erbs and epigrams. In such brilliant contests 
the emperors of thought will descend into the 
arena, that they may try their light rapiers, or 
learn a dexterous use of their ponderous weapons. 
Such is small-talk in its ideal attainment ; and 
though we may never see its perfection realized 
in the society of our time a glimpse of its possibil- 
ities will lead us to regard it with honor, as an 
equal interchange of fresh and sparkling thoughts 
expressed for the delight of all. 



OUR MODEEN WINTERS. 



^T^HERE is a prevailing opinion at the present 
day to the effect that ahnanacs and the 
weather have no a2)parent connection, and that 
those prognostications concerning the future state 
of the elements in which all people delight to 
indulge are certain beforehand to prove false. 
The degree of heat or cold that we may expect at 
any particular period can no longer be determined 
from the records of the past. 

It is not that the months have departed, to any 
extent, from their old distinctive cliaracter, but 
that all the seasons in their circling round seem 
to bring us a warmer atmosphere than was once 
their own. The flowers of spring surprise us with 
their early advent; summer increases her languid 



158 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

heats ; and* the mellow days of autumn succeed 
each other like one prolonged Indian summer. 
This average yearly increase of temperature is 
especially noticeable in winter. Formerly we ex- 
pected to find ourselves at Thanksgiving listening 
behind frosty panes to old Boreas and liis whis- 
tling crew ; and a sleigh-ride was one of the un- 
failing festivities of Christmas. Now New Year^'s 
Day often passes before tlie ground is hidden 
from sight; and we glide into May without realiz- 
ing that the dreaded winter has gone. 

What the statistics of meteorok^gists might prove 
we cannot say; but there appear good reasons for 
i\\Q belief that tlie climate of New England has 
materially changed from what it was fifty years 
ago. Men of middle age tell us that in their 
youth^ after a winter storm, they often went to 
school across lots, with no trace of paths or fences 
visible for miles, and that snow-shoes were then a 
necessary and common article of wear. Any such 
general engulfing of highways and obliteration of 
landmarks are almost unknown to the younger 
inhabitants of these country towns; and they listen 



OUR MODERN WINTERS. 159 

to such marvels with the same open-mouthed, in- 
credulous wonder with which they peruse the tales 
of Baron Munchausen. A certain venerable cot- 
tage of respectable size stands to-day in a meadow 
in the southern part of Maine; and though we 
never saw snow above its window-sills in midwin- 
ter, old farmers of the region remember that once 
after a long storm it was found to be buried com- 
pletely from sight ; and when neighbors went to 
the rescue of the two aged w^omen within it, they 
were forced to dig an arched way at random into 
the surrounding mass till they struck the door. 
There they found a cordial greeting from the be- 
nidited inmates, who had not seen earth or sky 
for nearly forty-eight hours, and who were won- 
dering if they should ever again communicate with 
the outer world. In our early days w^e felt an irre- 
sistible desire to whistle upon hearing that story • 
and even now it has to our mind very much the 
air of those extraordinary recitals which people 
are recommended to narrate to the marines. 

Once in a great while, it is true, there is vouch- 
safed to us a sin-ht of one of these traditional storms. 



IGO BF.OJrSING JMONG BOOKS. 

A deluge of snow which swept over the Northern 
States a few years ago still figures as one of the 
weather marvels of our time. Then, in many 
places^ no sleigh ventured forth for days ; and 
when at length the roads w^ere broken out^ they 
were like deep canals scooped out between tower- 
ing baidcs, so that at first only the tips of the 
riders^ whips could be seen from the farm-house 
windows, and then, after a thaw, the tops of their 
tall hats. But occurrences like this, which we 
expect to behold but once in a lifetime, appear to 
have been the normal condition of affairs half a 
century ago. 

Of course we know what w^onderful things were 
always happening when people were young. Such 
hailstones are never seen now as those which our 
fathers tell us thumped their small pates when 
they were hurrying from school, — hailstones big 
as hens^ eggs, laying grain and flower-beds j)ros- 
trate at a blow, and smashing unnumbered panes 
of glass with their rattling flood ; no such awful 
eclipses or unexpected dark days as those which 
terrified our mothers in their pinafores, when a 



OUR MODERN WINTERS. 161 

sickly darkness chilled the air at noonday, setting 
dogs to howling and cats to considering their ways, 
and making the hearts of the hens fail them for 
fear. After the great shower of meteors which 
fell a few years ago, and which modern astrono- 
mers heralded as most rare and glorious, we were 
surprised to learn that it was in no way compara- 
ble to that which many men had witnessed in then- 
youth, when for several hours the stars of the fir- 
mament seemed shooting in every direction, and 
falling around the observer in scintillating rain. 
These wondrous scenes and portents dire must be 
accepted as real events ; though we query if the 
ears of the next generation are not destined to be 
startled, and the hair of their heads to stand on 
end, when we relate in after years the experiences 
of our own day. AVho would not be a hero if 
himself could be the chronicler ? It shall go 
hard with us if these do not seem fearsome times, 
and such as try men^s souls, when we sit, forty 
years hence, in mob-cap and spectacles, rehearsing 
them to groups of childish listeners. 

But, making due allowance for the natural ex- 
11 



162 BRO WISING J MONO BOOKS. 

aggeration of story-tellers, when memory has 
failed and impressions only remain, there can, we 
suppose, be no doubt that a considerable increase 
of temperature has for a long period been mollify- 
ing our New England climate. This is the gen- 
eral testimony of elderly, observant men ; and the 
plain facts which they relate cannot be questioned. 
Similar changes are known to have taken place in 
other lands. Italy was formerly visited with much 
severer winters than any which her shivering chil- 
dren now experience, as they hover over braziers 
of coals in unwarmed old palaces. When Horace 
sends an ode to his city friends, inviting them to 
sup with him at his country fireside, he begins 
with the declaration that now Soracte stands cov- 
ered with deep snow, — a sight which the inhabitant 
of Sabhie meadows rarely, if ever, sees to-day. 
He has, moreover, much to say about the frozen 
Tiber, and the masses of ice and snow that sur- 
round Eome, — a state of thhigs at present un- 
known in that southern clime. 

It may be that the cutting down of forests has 
something to do with the change ; but this single 



OUR MODERN WINTERS. 163 

cause can hardly suffice to produce such effects. 
Americans find it always convenient to attribute 
perturbations of the thermometer to irregularity 
in the course of the Gulf Stream and of southern- 
bound icebergs ; but will any man, learned in cur- 
rents and winds, tell us if it be true that our warm 
river in the sea has swerved of late years from its 
regular course, melting the icebergs before their 
time, and wafting to us some of the bland breezes 
with which England has so long been regaled ? It 
has been said that certain philosophers connect 
these strange variations of temperature with the 
spots that appear and vanish upon the face of 
the sun ; for the same reason, we suppose, that the 
Tenterden steeple was held responsible for the 
Godwin Sands. 

But, after all, we are only coming to our proper 
bearings in respect to heat. It would seem to be 
the most natural thing in the world that we should 
luxuriate in mild, enjoyable winters ; for are not we 
New Englanders dwelling on the same parallels of 
latitude that pass through the provinces of north- 
ern Italy and the vineyards of southern France? 



164 BROIVSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

And why should we be wading through deep snows 
amid hj^perborean rigors^ while citizens of Eorne 
are surprised when they find icicles fringing their 
fountains, and the riorentines gaze at a few waver- 
ina: snow-flakes in blank dismay ? Of late, as our 
winters have been growing milder, theirs have 
become correspondingly severe; so that it may be 
tliat Nature is attempting to straighten her iso- 
thermal lines. 

We are not yet prepared, however, to recommend 
Plymouth Eock as a desirable site for a w^inter 
residence, and we must still consider ourselves 
as peculiarly favored in regard to a prevalence of 
east winds ; but it is our conviction, nevertheless, 
that the New England of to-day is not as cold as 
she is painted. From the recorded sufferings of 
our early colonists historians and novelists appear 
to draw their information, when they exhaust their 
supply of desolate adjectives in describing the sever- 
ities of our climate. A perusal of their pages would 
lead one to suppose that the unbroken wilderness of 
snow and ice amid which the Pilgrims passed their 
first winter was a regular feature of our modern 



OUR MODERN WINTERS. 165 

Decembers. We are r^minded^ on reading them, 
of the stories told of the arctic zone by Sir John 
Mandeville, the oldest traveller and most fascinat- 
ing liar of whom our literature preserves any 
record. He relates that in his day the cold of that 
region was said to be so great that all sounds, 
whether of guns, trumpets, or the voices of men, 
were frozen up as soon as uttered, and never heard 
until the spring, when they all thawed out together 
and produced a wild babel in the air. Geogra- 
phers leave us to infer that the chief products of 
Maine are snow-drifts and pine-trees; and on tak- 
ing up a brief biography of Governor Andrew, 
written by Mrs. Stowe, we find her describing his 
birthplace in that State as one of those bleak 
mountain towns of northern New England where 
winter reigns six months in the year, and where 
the inhabitants are forced to shelter themselves 
within doors the greater part of the time. Can 
this be the town, we ask ourselves, whose hillsides, 
as we fondly remember them, seem ever waving 
with silky grass and golden buttercups, and where, 
in our dreams, bobolinks, tipsy with joy, never 



166 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

cease their carols over blossoming orchard-trees ? 
It was during the last days of November that we 
stood upon one of its low hills, with mayflower- 
leaves showing green at our feet^ and chickadees 
calling merrily from the trees or flitting about in 
the warm sun. Seventy miles off towered the 
whole range of the White Mountains, gleaming 
lustrously white from base to summit in their win- 
ter robes; but so sharply were they contrasted 
with the bare brown fields stretching in a vast 
plain between our station and their elevated peaks 
that they shone afar, like a luminous mirage of 
mighty icebergs. Often Christmas passes in the 
town without snow, and mayflowers come in April. 
The neighboring province of Canada suffers the 
same misrepresentation. In an old Geography it 
is illustrated by the picture of two men digging 
a sheep out of a snow-drift ; and our youthful 
impressions of the land were of a realm buried 
perennially under tumbled masses of snow, tracked 
only by beavers and otters, and holding direct 
aerial communication with the North Pole. When 
we beheld it for ourselves^ it was the garden of 



OUR MODERN IFINTERS. 1G7 

America that we saw, with level fields of billowy 
grain exitending to the horizon, and tangled hedges 
of wild- flowers lining the roads on either hand. 
"We knew there was another side to the picture, 
but this attractive side had never been shown us. 

When a designating epithet gets into literature, 
it is fixed beyond the possibility of change; 
and whatever character our climate may hereafter 
acquire, it will always be held to resemble that 
of Greenland; as foreigners, familiar only with 
the traditional Yankee of the stage, still believe 
our city streets to be filled with men carrying lank 
carpet-bags, wherein rattle a few wooden nutmegs, 
which they are retailing in nasal tones, with a 
strange twist to their o^s. If the portrait painted 
for us cannot be exact and lifelike, it is a pity 
that it should not err on the side of flattery, 
instead of caricaturing us so abominably. 



SPEING AS SEEN FROM A CITY 
WINDOW. 



nnHAT season of vernal joys wliicli has re- 
turned each year to gladden the hearts of 
all the generations of men^ and which has been 
Avritten about by every poet that ever rhymed, 
still wears for us as fresh a charm as when the 
first grass-blades covered the hillsides in Eden, 
and the roses budded under the wondering eyes 
of Eve. 

City people consult no almanacs, and only 
know of frisking lambs, loosened brooks, and 
May's balmy zephyrs, as pretty terms in old- 
fashioned romances. When March winds begin 
to course along deserted streets, tliey waft no 
fragrant prophecies from banks of violet or thyme, 



SPRING. 1C9 



but seem rather to have skimmed over arctic 
seas^ and to have left a whole flotilla of icebergs 
stranded off the coast. As for nature^s awaken- 
ing, stone pavements give an eftectual quietus to 
every stirring root that would fain send forth a 
shoot into the upper air. But, walking between 
brick walls and over hard sidewalks, the denizens 
of the town are yet conscious of certain infallible 
signs by which the presence of this benign season 
may be detected, long before the grass is green in 
the public square, or the trees wave their leaflets 
overhead. 

When the shop-windows bloom out gorgeously 
witli- bright cambrics and delicate muslins, and 
lingering groups of women drift past them with 
rapt, adoring looks ; when winter clothing sud- 
denly oppresses us as too shabby and grievous to 
be borne; when pretty damsels imprison them- 
selves behind veils of barege, and squinting dowa- 
gers erect diminutive jmrasols; when the grocer 
brings us exotic greens and lettuce, and sets down 
every wilted leaf to our account ; when small 
boys with grimy knuckles are snapping marbles in 



170 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

the alley-ways, and small girls are trolling hoops 
on the dry walks; when whirls of dust overtake 
us at the street-corners, and send us home, only 
to find that quiet paradise upheaved through all 
its strata, carpets torn up and curtains down, and 
Chaos and Old Night, in the shape of sundry 
mops, pails, and besoms, taking possession of the 
cliamber floors, — then it is we know that spring, 
the sweet spring, beloved of poets, painters, and 
lovers, has come. These are the heralds that 
announce the presence of that beautiful maiden 
of whom Mrs. Barbauld sings, who approaches 
clothed in a robe of light green, and breathes upon 
the rivers till their icy fetters melt away. We 
submit with patience to such annoying preludes 
of her reign as greet us in city streets, for are 
they not the harbingers of the rainbows and bobo- 
links, the apple-blossoms and meadow buttercups, 
that we hope to see in other places before she 
shall bid us good-by? Though a flying visit 
to distant fields has shown us patches of snow 
dwindling on the north side of pasture-walls, and 
the brimming Merrimac heaving cold and dark 



SFRrXG. 1 71 



between his leafless banks, we still fancy, on our 
return, that the hillsides far away are shining Avith 
verdure, and that every sunny hillock is awave 
with wind-flowers and violets. 

Sitting here at our window, overlooking a busy 
thoroughfare and the wide, open reacli of the city 
Common, we find delight in watching the gradual 
advances of the sirring. No more hoar-frost 
shining upon the iron fences; no more relics of 
the last snow-squall melting on the springing turf 
beyond. In the sunny street, light basket-phae- 
tons with swaying canopies replace the glancing 
sleighs that sped so merrily along the road to 
Brighton, and sent up to us the pleasant jingle of 
their bells. We scent coming dandelions in these 
soft western gales that blow over the Common, 
though only a few weeks ago they seemed to 
sweep up from the Back Bay laden wdth invisible 
needle-points. The pedestrians who were then 
making short cuts on the cleared paths were 
forced to fight every step of the way. Men 
turned coat-collars about their ears, and women 
held mufi's to their faces, while the wind howled 



172 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 



through their rigging as it does through a ship^s 
canvas in the first mutterings of a storm. At 
street-corners, where blasts have held '^ high 
jinks '' the winter long, small school-boys, home- 
ward bound, Avere glad to clutch their dictionaries 
to save themselves from an airy ascent, remember- 
ing, perhaps, the story of the geese who carried 
pebbles in their mouths when doubling a windy 
promontory of Greece. Now people saunter at 
their ease ; and although spring breezes are still 
given to whirling great sandy gusts up and 
down, even when the skies are warm and " the 
lift unclouded blue,^^ the upper realms are fast 
taking on that ethereal mildness with which the 
poets endow them. Probably no one is more 
conscious of tlie change than the stolid old hero 
in fur cap and soldier^s coat, who sits by the 
broad walk, with his printed songs spread out 
enticingly to the gaze of passers-by, and a " Life 
of Napoleon " hung on tlie fence behind him, so 
that all who run may read. He has kept at his 
post in the very teeth of the wind, through the 
coldest days, and must realize better than most 



1 



SPRING. 173 



what comfort lies in bland zephyrs and soft 
skies. 

The grass is already fresh and green on the 
high bank behind him, where a small and ancient 
graveyard lies forgotten under its trees. There, 
since the last shower, a myriad of golden dande- 
lions have opened their eyes between the quaint 
headstones, and the vines that climb around the 
tall urns are bursting into bud. A great stranger 
in these parts, a pretty yellow butterfly, was seen 
there to-day ; and he went fluttering over the 
ground in a bewildered manner, as if just awak- 
ened from a long sleep and trying to accustom 
himself to the strange spring suit in which he 
found himself arrayed. Two dilapidated old gar- 
deners have been busy since morning, raking the 
fresh turf and loosening the earth about the tree- 
boles. They are chatting together over their 
spades ; and if we could hear their talk we should 
find it as edifying, perhaps, as that of the grave- 
diggers in " Hamlet/' Yerdure and sods are all 
that need their care in that secluded spot ; for, 
save a wreath of dry amaranths, no cultivated 



174 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

bud or blossom brightens its shades. We must 
go up to the great elm if we would find crocuses 
in bloom ; and they cluster, too, before the liouses 
in the street beyond, together with flaming tulips, 
and daffadowndillies that have come to town and 
are nodding in drowsy sweetness among spikes of 
gay hyacinths. 

But if the little graveyard lies asleep, the world 
that surrounds it is stirring with restless life. We 
hear approaching the steady tattoo of a drum, and 
behold a school-boy regiment marching by the 
paling to its summer parade-ground, silken ban- 
ner flying, bayonets flashing, and hundreds of 
small feet beating the ground Avith soldier-like 
precision. No victor of a hundred fights ever 
waved his sword with a more martial air than does 
that young commander, as he steps back across 
the shadows, calling to his men; no war-worn 
veterans on the very edge of battle could advance 
with a more determ.ined front. When this army 
of the future takes the field, we may be sure that 
every man of them will do his best to slay the 
dastard foe or to come back upon his shield. 



SFRING. 175 



On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, the 
sandy ground where the soldiers are wont to dis- 
play their tactics is alive with ball-players ; f(3r 
then our juvenile heroes are released from military 
hardships, and free to follow their own sweet Avill. 
There we see the city gamins swarming by hun- 
dreds, all of a size, all of a color, and apparently 
all of an age, and leaping and skipping like so 
many tireless insects under summer boughs. 
Little girls, clinging to their nurses, stroll along 
the edges of the adjoining bank, and look down 
upon the wild sport with envy in their eyes, but 
are soon hurried along out of the reach of plung- 
ing footballs. It is the national game, however, 
which chiefly engrosses that seething crowd of 
urchins ; and they remain, swinging their clumsy 
little bats in a promiscuous manner, till the pangs 
of hunger send them off, on a home run, to the 
warm suppers and scolding mothers that, we 
doubt not, await them somewhere in this hive 
of humanity. 

Now and then a kite is brought down into the 
space; and everybody is eager to assist in starting 



176 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

it on an upward career. But^ for all the holding 
and running and shouting, it does not quit its 
native earth without a struggle ; it dives down in 
sudden spasms, and chngs to the nearest branches, 
and sails off, when it must, with a sort of protest 
in its veerhig course. There it goes, mounting 
aloft, and flourishing its tail from side to side, but 
settling at length into a steady pull that keeps the 
string taut, and makes the little fellow beneath it 
unwind the reel in proud haste. For some strange 
reason, men and women do not fly kites, — none 
except Dr. Eranklin and Mr. Dick ; but if we 
were to live our life over again, we should spend 
half our leisure days in holding kite-strings from 
the back doorstep. It is so fine to see the grace- 
ful creature swaying and soaring up there among 
the clouds and the birds, leagues away in the 
ether, where you could never go, and yet obedient 
to the twitch of your little finger, and pleading 
with you, by its mighty strain, for a longer tether 
and a higher flight. 

The organ-grinders come at morning to give us 
their greeting ; and whether the tune they offer be 



SPRTXG. 1 77 



" The Girl I left behind me/' " Marching through 
Georgia/' or the "Last Eose of Summer/' we are 
always charmed. Their wheezy melody could not 
well be spared from the pleasures of a city life. 
It harmonizes the jar and clatter of the street, and 
proclaims that in the midst of a bread-and-butter- 
getting community some one finds his account in 
ministering, however poorly, to aesthetic tastes. 
Never have we found their tones unwelcome, save 
on the morning when one of them struck up the 
glorious "Marseillaise" under our window, at the 
very hour when we knew that foreign legions were 
marching through the streets of desolate Paris, 
and forcing her to drink of the bitterest dregs 
of defeat. Those were the days when we were 
sorry for France, and pictured Paris as a proud 
Zenobia, unconquered in her chains, even while 
pacing behind the triumphal car of a German 
kaiser. 

In this lovely April weather the hand-organ's 

cheery music seems a part of the gladness of 

spring. We wish the swarthy old Italian would 

look less dolorous as he grinds out his rollicking 

12 



178 BROWSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

strains; and that the little girl beside liim^ who 
beats her circle of bells in such a listless fashion, 
would start ofp into liilarious jigs on the pavement, 
tapping her tambourine briskly upon head and 
elbows, and spinning it wildly on her finger-tips, 
to celebrate these radiant days. All winter long 
she has come to delight us, and often, we fear, has 
caught more snow-flakes than pennies in her lifted 
tambourine; but she looked as jovial then as she 
does to-day. Even the ring of hard metal at her 
feet cannot tempt her into a smile. Sorry little 
minstrel, is it nothing to you that the roses and 
lilies will soon be here, and that bluebirds and 
robins even now sit listenhig above your head? 
"When happy faces greet you behind the case- 
ments, and happy sunshine sparkles on your 
tinkling bells, can you not forget poverty and 
weariness, and remember only that the spring 
has come ? 

Trees put on slowly the garniture of spring. 
All is fresh and blooming underfoot long before 
their naked branches show signs of the busy forces 
at work within them. But now buds ap])ear. 



SPRIXG. 179 



feathering every twig and tendril ; and, seen in the 
distance, the tree stands enveloped in a haze of 
color, too delicate to hide the tracery of its boughs. 
The elms are draped in misty brown; the red blood 
of the maple flushes to the tip of the highest spray; 
the trailing willows shiver under a veil of tender- 
est green ; and green, too, Avith waving foliage 
is the long hedge of lilac -bushes that girds the 
little graveyard as with a verdurous wall. What a 
tossing of purple plumes there will be along that 
high bank on breezy June mornings ; what wafts 
of sweet odor floating up to us through the still 
evening air ! There in the corner a young cherry- 
tree has already worn its snowy garlands, and 
dropped them, petal by petal, upon the stone tab- 
let beneath. Even the ungainly Balm of Gilead, 
that stretches high and wide its boughs of grayish 
white, is swinging tasselled blossoms aloft in the 
warm wind. A few more weeks of such sunny 
weather, and all the elms and maples will have 
donned their full, rustling robes. When summer 
unrolls these opening leaves, we must bid adieu 
to the three steeples that spire behind them, to 



180 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

the great, shapely dome, and the statue of the 
blessed warrior on his spirited steed. But even 
then, within many a gap, will rise clustered smoke- 
stacks and gables of distant houses ; and these, 
wrapped in hazy vapors and blending with the 
dim horizon, shall seem to be the towers and bat- 
tlements of unseen castles, " bosomed high in 
tufted trees,^^ and looking down upon us from 
lofty steeps. 

Higher than trees or liouse-tops is a realm, fairer, 
to our thhiking, than all the sights that lie beneath 
it. The hints of spring that we behold in city 
streets can only tantalize us with dreams of richer 
beauty budding in grassy fields ; but over our 
head stretches the same radiant canopy, brimming 
with color and light, that is spread above country 
hillsides. Birds wheel as gladly through its 
spaces as if they looked down over lake and 
forest ; and upon the trees of the Common the 
sun shines as brightly as if their trunks were set 
in damp meadows and surrounded by sleepy kine. 
This airy dome is beyond the power of man to 
change. His furnaces may send up into it the 



SPRING. 181 



smoke of their torment, but the rising columns 
break at once into misty wreaths, that vanish in 
rainbow tints and curves of dissolving grace. 

To appreciate in a city this beauty of the sky, 
one must live on a level with the tree-tops and 
above imprisoning walls. The traditional garret 
of the scribbler and poetaster can be dreary 
enough, no doubt, when its outlook is bounded 
by chimney-pots and dingy roofs ; but when it 
ignores all limits of the earth, and fronts squarely 
upon the glowing, varying heavens, its occupant 
may w^ell count himself one of the blest. Here 
at our ingleside we sit, and gaze straight away 
into cloudland, with a free sweep, east and west, to 
the far horizon, and nothing between us and the 
distant houses but a wilderness of boughs. Grov- 
elling mortals in shaded drawing-rooms forget 
that such things as new moons and sunsets exist 
in a metropolis ; but the sky above us is ever 
present and glorious, whether it flushes with fine 
braveries of color, or shows a wide arch of troubled 
vapors, and great blackening thunderheads trailing 
their dark fringes athwart the silvery grays. 



182 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

Ill these breezy days^ when the blue is kept 
clear and lustrous by shower and sun, and fleecy 
cloudlets sail leisurely along in some aerial current, 
we seem to share their dreamy motion, and to hold 
our course with them serenely towards the east ; 
or we soar and di]) and curvet with the swift 
swallow, who slants his wings and shows his 
gleaming breast as he wheels far away under the 
billowy dome. Then we recall our childhood's 
dream of heaven, when we fancied the beatitude of 
bliss to consist in swinging in a rocking-chair that 
was well balanced on summer clouds, with a heap 
of new novels rising beside us, and an exhaustless 
supply of pecan-nuts in our apron-pockets. This 
does not strike us as bad even now ; though we 
might wish to add thereto another rocking-chair 
and another reader somewhere within hailing dis- 
tance. 

At night we scarcely note the stars sparkling 
above ; for, far and wide, througli the boughs of 
the Common and Garden, there gleam a hundred 
flashing lights, larger and brighter than any the 
sky can show. Though we know them to be 



I 



SPRING. 183 



fixed upon lamp-posts ia all the paths and sur- 
rounding streets, only their fires are visible, and 
these encompass the scene like a zodiac of fallen 
planets. And on winter evenings what weird 
splendors have flamed up over the stars where 
that quaint yellow belfry swings its broad vane 
against tlie sky ! There the northern lights have 
held their airy revels, streaming up from a solid 
bank of radiance in quivering ribbons of light, or 
waving in broad sheets to the very zenith, like 
luminous banners blown in a wind, while we could 
almost hear the snap and flutter of their sudden 
shifting. On chilly nights these strange pyrotech- 
nics may still be seen, but their finest displays are 
over for the season. The constellations look doAvn 
now through a calm, dewy air; and by day the 
horizon wears something of the misty loveliness 
of summer. Already it shines deliciously soft in 
the long afternoons ; and at sunset the light spar- 
kles warm and red on the glass of the Park Street 
steeple, and glares and glances from the gilded 
pepper-box upon the State House dome; and then 
the last rays forsake the tree-tops, and fade away 
from the limitless spaces of azure. 



184 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

Curious neighbors we have ; but they are chir- 
rupy little fellows, who sit in the topmost boughs, 
and do nothing more annoying than to tip sly 
winks to us now and then, as if to imply that they 
knew a thing or two about our affairs, but could 
be relied upon to keep it to themselves. Their 
number increases every day ; but they have never 
quite left us in the worst of weather. We have 
seen a flock of these jolly little beggars hopping 
and twittering in the bushes in December; and 
though it was none of our business, we could not 
help wondering in what place they found their 
suppers and dinners, and under what coverlets 
they slept o^ nights. The doves are always here, 
sweeping past on broad wings that darken the 
window in their rapid flight. Long before their 
wonted time the robins came, — so early, indeed, 
that many a flirt of snow has stopped their nest- 
repairing, and sent them off shivering with the 
blues. They have arrived now in full force. 
Crossing the Common the otlier morning, we 
counted twenty-four burly chaps in their best red 
waistcoats, foraging in the low ground for their 



SPRING. 185 



breakfast; and the chatter and clamor that wake 
us at dawn seem to proceed from numberless 
throats. In their well-reguhited households all the 
family scolding is evidently administered at day- 
break ; and on cloudy mornings the dose apj)ears 
to be unusually severe. There is one nest^ swing- 
ing over the sidewalk on a low branch, that is 
still without its occupants. It might have been 
built in many a retired, verdurous nook ; but 
there it is, rocking in the breeze, just over the 
heads of hurrying mortals. We look every day 
for the arrival of some gorgeous couple from Bal- 
timore, — a pair of golden-breasted orioles, who 
shall proceed to set up their northern housekeep- 
ing for the summer in the most approved style. 

But no birds that return to us after winter 
storms have been more welcome than the swans. 
We had long missed them from the segment of 
blue lake that is visible from our window; for 
there they were wont to take their stately airings 
so long as the waters flowed. We delighted to 
watch them on autumn mornings, sailing slowly 
along in single file, at equal distances apart, with 



186 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

necks arclied at the same graceful aiigle^ and con- 
scious dignity in their bearing, as if they had 
ranged themselves at starting with an eye to effect, 
and were out on a dress parade. Their breasts 
seemed to glide over the weaves without effort, 
borne along by the light wind that scarcely rum- 
pled the down of their feathers ; and occasionally 
their wings, white and beautiful as sculptured 
marble, were half lifted to catch the favoring 
breeze. Such a picture on glassy waters Words- 
worth must have seen when he wrote the lines, — 

" The swan on still St. Mary's Lake 
FJoat double, swan and shadow." 

When winter^s frost turned the liquid of the 
pond into a sheet of ice, this fair armada put into 
port. A darting throng of skaters skimmed the 
hard surface, but the swans were not. 

After long hibernating somewhere in their smnll, 
dark dwellings, they were discovered a few weeks 
ago drifting across the blue gap between the pop- 
lar-trees, as lustrously white and as haughty as 
ever. Their full-dress parades are abandoned for 
the present, perhaps from a lack of drill induced 



SPRING. 187 



by long housing ; and they move without state_, in 
detachments of two or three. "When these voyages 
are ended, the green bank invites them ; and tliere 
they are pleased to stand, pluming their feathers, 
or lost in silent contemplation. The black swan, 
who mostly keeps by himself, conscious, it may 
be, that he suffers by comparison with his fairer 
brethren, buries his scarlet bill in the down of his 
ebon breast, and dreams the while of his native 
Hamburg or the sedgy shores of Baltic seas. 

Can it be that swans ever sing ? Travellers in 
Iceland have spoken of their tuneful lays ; and 
the common saying that the swanks dying song is 
the sweetest would imply that he warbled many 
earlier strains. Yet were a melodious carol to 
rise suddenly from that bevy of feathered beauties, 
when at any time we stood admiring them upon 
the margin of the pond, we should start with as 
much surprise as if one of the neighboring statues 
— like the Commandant^'s in " Don Giovanni ^^ — 
had opened its lips and addressed us. It must be 
that all the swans we have seen were born deaf 
and dumb. None of them were ever heard to 



BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 



attempt a roundelay during their lives^ and we 
feel sure that they will die and give no sign. 
And according to the doctrine of compensations, 
they should not sing. Clothed in majestic loveli- 
ness, they need no other charm ; but it concerns 
us to knoAv whence they have gained their musical 
reputation. 



TAKING A TUEKISH BATH. 



"\T rilEN Medea promises to restore our aged 
frames to fresh youth and beauty, we may 
not distrust her magic powers ; but^ surmising how 
much she will need to hew and hack the poor 
limbs, and how hot must be the seething caldron, 
we naturally shrink from delivering ourselves over 
to the hands of the sorceress. 

Enthusiastic writers, who hailed the importation 
of the Turkish Bath to our American shores as a 
national gain, penned many glowing rhapsodies on 
the beatitudes of feeling and rejuvenation of 
strength which it induces, and were prone to in- 
sist upon it as the first duty of man that he should 
go straightway to its waters and be healed. But 
in the years that have elapsed since then, this mode 



190 BROWSING J310NG BOOKS. 

of ablution has ceased to demand public attention, 
and it has at length quietly taken its place as one 
of the foreign luxuries that are indispensable to the 
few, and almost unknown to the many. Whether 
they doubt its beneficial effects, or shrink from its 
rigorous treatment, its varied processes still remain 
something of a mystery and a dread to the major- 
ity of our people. 

To satisfy the curiosity of such of our sisters 
as hesitate to test its merits for themselves, we 
will describe the methods by which its pretended 
marvels are wrought, leaving the question of its 
curative properties to be decided by those more 
competent to judge. 

In tlie early days of its establishment among us, 
the apartments prepared for this novel bath were 
the resort of inexperienced patrons, who knew 
nothing of what was in store for them, beyond 
vague impressions derived from books of Eastern 
travel. Hither, then, we come, a merry party of 
novices, resolved to meet bravely whatever awaits 
us, and, if need be, to perish together. We are 
ushered into an ordinary sitting-room, presided 



TAKING A TURKISH BATH. 191 

over by a smiling goddess ; and at her behest we 
first register our names and abiding-place. This 
strikes us as a thoughtful provision ; for in case we 
never come out alive, it will be a comfort to our 
friends to see where we last booked ourselves. 
Then we pass to an inner apartment, surrounded 
with curtained stalls, like those found in ice-cream 
saloons. Into these the goddess distributes us, de- 
positing with each a folded sheet, and informing 
us all that we are to present ourselves in this array 
as soon as may be. One by one we come forth 
from the little dens; but in spite of the classic air 
which Ave have tried to impart to the trailing folds, 
and the severe simplicity in wliich we have skew- 
ered up our locks, after the style of antique Greek 
drawings, our appearance fails to be impressive. 
Peals of laughter, sudden and long, greet each 
recruit that joins the waiting band ; for the sudden 
transformation from becrimped, bepanniered, be- 
ruffled little dames, into lank, melancholy spectres 
shrouded in white, is irresistibly comic and exhil- 
arating. We take up a line of march, and pass 
solemnly across the sitting-room which we had 



192 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

entered upon arriving, and note its straight, cane- 
seated lounges, set end to the wall. These were 
empty wdien we first beheld them ; but it cheers 
us to discover there now a row of chubby-faced, 
frowsy damsels rolled up in w^arm blankets, and 
looking like fresh little mummies just waked up. 
Though their eyes twhikle contagiously as the 
ghostly procession files before them, we move on 
silently to our fate. The goddess glides before us, 
and, at a door mysteriously shut, rings an unseen 
bell. When we halt w^e find she has vanished. 

The door opens, springs behind us, and admits 
us all into a new domain. The being who opened 
the door may be mermaid, naiad, or siren ; but 
she is certainly of the Irish persuasion, with a 
great air of health, good-nature, and despatch about 
her. We step down to a tiled floor, warm to the 
touch ; the mermaid flashes water on our heads, 
and lays there a folded towel, wet enough to drip 
constantly over our eyes. This done, she remarks 
blithely that w^e are to remain here till called for, 
perhaps twenty minutes, and disappears. We sur- 
vey the small room, furnished only with a cane- 



TAKING A TURKISH BATH. 193 

seated lounge and a few hard chairs^ and inclosed on 

one side by dark^ floating curtains, scant and faded. 

No oriental mngnificence here, surely. We grow 

conscious that this is a hot region ; calm breathing 

is no easy matter, and the perspiration starts over 

us in great beads. Even the light covering which 

we- hug about us soon becomes a burden ; and that 

towel, — limp, heavy, and wet, it pitches over our 

face at every motion, or shelves off sideways, or 

rushes down behind to the hot tiles ; and in vain 

we place it straight and square, after the manner 

of Italian peasants, and strive to bear our ^lead 

erect. It is difficult to be statuesque, with the 

mercury passing a hundred. 

Soon a spirit of adventure possesses us ; we lift 

the curtain that conceals one end of the room, and 

wander into a larger section beyond, where the floor 

is much hotter and the thermometer on the wall 

says 120°. The storehouse of the caloric appears 

to be closed ovens in the opposite wall ; and thence 

the tremulous tides of hot air radiate. It is heroic 

to attempt an approach to that solid masonry ; we 

cannot sic composedly in the atmosphere about us; 
13 



194 BROJrSlNG AMONG BOOKS. 

so, crossing our arms^ we pace back and forth, like 
Napoleon at St. Helena, but feeling more like a 
watermelon in a state of violent perspiration. It 
occurs to us that no sound from without has 
reached us since we entered; and when, pray, was 
that ? The mermaid has forgotten us ; or she has 
lured us to our destruction, and escaped through 
that curtained door. Probably she has never read 
Dante, or she would have written over the entrance, 
*^ Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.''^ Shall 
we set up cries for help? No one will hear them. 
Suddenly, from the unseen region beyond, there 
issue sharp sounds, so resonant, so frequent, so 
plainly untempered by mercy, that we stop on 
the threshold of a joke, gaze into each other's eyes, 
and tremble. Then all is still as before. Is tlie 
victim dead? 

Soon the curtained door opens; the mermaid 
peeps through, smiling and at ease, as if nothing 
had happened, and motions one of us to approach. 
We look volumes of farewell messages at those 
we leave behind, and vanish with her. Another 
and a smaller room, with floor dripping with 



TAKING J TURKISH BATIJ. 195 

water, but decidedlj cooler. Parallel curtains 
divide it into several sections; and in each of 
these an oblong marble slab is horizontally set 
upon a raised structure of brick, looking for all 
the world like some tomb-tablet from an old 
churchyard, scrubbed up and taken in-doors. Here, 
then, the poor victims are buried. But we are 
now so reduced in circumstances, so hopelessly 
in her power, so passive and ignorant, that we 
never think of resisting the mermaid. She takes 
ruthlessly the last woven relic of civilization to 
which we had clung; and upon a marble slab, 
like the sculptured figures at Westminster Abbey, 
we are laid. A great sponge passes over us, cool 
and fresh; then a mass of cocoanut fibre goes 
scraping up and down, and covers us with soapy 
lather. Then begin the pounding and rubbing, 
the kneading of joints and muscles, till our sen- 
sations are like those a batch of dough must 
experience when undergoing transformation into a 
pan of biscuit. When we think to ask the mer- 
maid what harm we ever did her that she should 
treat us so, she begins to beat a quick tattoo up 



196 BROWSING J MONO BOOKS. 

and down our Avliole body with her doubled fists ; 
and tliis was tlie sound which terrified us from 
afar. But wliile she is pommelling us to a jelly, 
nnd cracking all our bones, we cannot but admire 
the dexterity with which she does it; and she has 
so SAveet a Dublin brogue in the few words she 
utters^ and her smile is so cheery _, that we feel 
tempted to forgive her. 

Next she leads us over the soppy floor ; and 
before we can well part our sea-weed locks to 
take an observation of the outer world, driving 
over us comes a great power of water, warm at 
first, then colder, sweeping us from crown to foot; 
and we know not whence it comes nor whither it 
goes, only we are sure that it takes us on its 
way. We think with pity of the little marble 
nymph under a fountain-jet in the Public Gar- 
den; but, considering how much of such treatment 
that poor young woman endures, it is to be 
hoj^ed that she enjoys it more. 

That we may go through all the variations, we 
step finally into a tank of water on the floor-level,, 
which looks suspiciously broad and dark; but we 



TAKING A TURKISH BATH. 197 

grasp the mermaid^s hand, and she brings us 
safely to land again. 

And now we have had our bath; so we are 
dried with towels, a blessing is flung over us in 
the shape of a thick bhmket, the bell is rung 
above the door, and there we. stand, — a returned 
ghost, waiting to be welcomed back to the land 
of the living. 

The goddess greets us ; on her hard lounges we 
repose, and these seem now the most luxurious of 
couches. We wish we could be sure of lying still 
for a day, so delightful is it to rest and rest. It 
may be we are not poetical, but none of the fabled 
visions visit our fancy here. We are ready to 
behold gorgeous curtains ablaze with crescents, 
low divans, with guitars leaning against silken 
cushions, the sparkling play of fountains, swarthy 
slaves in baggy trousers and slippers with toes in- 
clined to curl, turbaned pachas sitting cross-legged 
on carpets and smoking long pipes that stand 
before them, — but we fail to do it. There is not 
even a sense of exhilaration. We expected to feel 
strong as a lion and winged like the eagle, but are 



198 BROWSING J310NG BOOKS. 

only fatigued and exhausted. In this we all agree; 
and, being women, we sigli for a cup of tea, and 
even form dark designs of defying our temperance 
friends and procuring a bottle of wine before we 
come hither again. 

Though the promised visions and the physical 
rejuvenation appear to us moonshine, we do feel 
repaid by the sense of utter cleanliness which 
possesses us. We are conscious that we retain as 
little of the old Adam as is consistent with mortal 
life; and our faces are radiant with a clearer com- 
plexion and more spiritual light than ever shone 
there before. When again we come to taste this 
luxury of abounding purity, we shall tread confi- 
dently the steps over which we have shuddered so 
absurdly. 

We rise with dread to reclothe ourselves in 
earthly habiliments; and when we step out into 
the garish light of the street, where horse-cars are 
rattling past and dusty travellers hurrying by, 
we feel like visitants from another sphere, worthy 
to be greeted with "All hail, bright spirits in- 
create ! " 



OUE MINOE EIGHTS. 



'Tn HERE are certain rights belonging to us as 
individuals which legislation fails to recog- 
nizCj but which we claim for ourselves as essential 
to happiness and comfort. They concern the 
minor matters of life, and are founded only upon 
courtesy and a mutual forbearance ; yet we regard 
them not as favors and privileges graciously 
extended by our neighbors but as the just de- 
mands which all members of society are expected 
to make upon each other. When they are denied, 
we consider ourselves wronged, though we can 
look for no redress, and may not even acquaint 
the offender with our displeasure. These lesser 
claims cannot, then, be enforced ; they must be 
conceded if they are had at all; they are rights 



200 . BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

that a man may know, and knowing dare not 
maintain. But no surer test of refinement, or 
even of kindly imagination, can be found than 
the recognition accorded to these undefined 
claims. 

A good American authority declares the pur- 
suit of happiness to be one of our inalienable 
rights; and this statement justifies us in requiring 
that no man shall inflict upon our senses tlie 
indulgence of his own disagreeable tastes. 

You go down to the dinner-table at your hotel. 
Opposite you is discovered a portly dowager, gor- 
geous in lace and diamonds, who sits waiting for 
her dessert ; and, as she waits, she diverts herself 
by swinging slowly back and forth a sandal-wood 
fan. The scented breeze it creates floats into your 
very nose ; and since you are possessed of a deli- 
cate organization, and have an especial dislike to 
this odor, you feel at once as fahit as death. But 
what can you do ? Being already established in 
your seat, you dislike to create a scene by asking 
to be placed elsewhere ; so you remain and bear 
it. But from that hour you cherish in your breast 



OUR MINOR RIGHTS. 201 

an intense dislike of the dowager. You believe 
that she has no sensibilities, that her perceptions 
are obtuse, and that she is too conceited to sus- 
pect that any act of hers could fail to bestow 
pleasure upon an admiring world. You are sure, 
ever after, tliat it is her children who are scream- 
ing up and down the hall; and that it is her 
daughter who sets her door ajar at the witching 
hour of ten p. M., and proceeds to dash off rol- 
licking bravuras, crazy waltzes, and triumphant 
jubilates, for the space of sixty mortal minutes. 
Vainly at that hour do you endeavor to coax 
yourself to sleep. Your soul swells with indig- 
nation that your health, your comfort, your in^ 
disputable rights, should be so recklessly ignored. 
When marauding cats begin to howl their mourn- 
ful duets under your window, you hurl at them 
all the old psalm-books within reach, and there is 
a cessation of hostilities for a while ; but if one 
small volume were sent spinning never so tenderly 
against this nightingale's door, you would be held 
up to all the house as an unfeeling brute, and 
perhaps deservedly so. In your gathering wrath. 



202 BROWSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

you feel yourself liable at any moment to fling 
wide your own door, and sing out, " Thunder and 
Mars, let us have peace ! " But the reflection 
that even tliis protest would be utterly drowned 
by the melodious tempest raging within for- 
tunately restrains you. At length it ends, as do 
all things save eternity. In the morning you 
descend, pale and haggard, and take the only 
revenge allowed you, which consists in looking par- 
ticular daggers at the nocturnal fiend, as she sits 
before you at her breakfast. But she eats her 
muffin so composedly, and droops her eyelashes 
with such an elegant, nonchalant air, that you be- 
come convinced she is taking your pointed 
glances as the dazed stare of admiration. The next 
evening the door is opened wider, the piano is 
more demonstrative, the singing more exultant; 
and there is no longer a doubt that the deluded 
performer fancies you hanging with breathless 
interest upon every note. You are fairly check- 
mated. It is true that, as a hearing and sleeping 
being, you have riglits which others are bound to 
respect ; but if they do not, the offence is not 



OUR 3riN0R RIGHTS. 203 

actionable. The only choice allowed you is to 
submit or to quit the field. 

After certain hours of the night, every man 
thinks himself justified in demanding a reasonable 
degree of quiet in the world without. The old 
Norman conqueror rung his curfew a little earlier 
than we do ours ; but soon after nine o^clock it is 
expected tliat good citizens will betake themselves 
homcAvard, or, at all events, that the sound of 
their footsteps and the roll of their carriage-wheels 
will be the only indications of a later progress. 
Noisy demonstrations at such times we resent as 
unwarrantable ; but yet we pause on the threshold 
of sleep to hear the merry ring of young voices as 
they pass below, trolling some tender refrain, and 
even murmur, " God bless you, my boys ! " as the 
chime of their notes and their well-timed footfalls 
die away. We forgive much to hnppy youth and 
to hearts beating together in brotherly good- will. 
And the old oysterman sends out his late cries of 
" Oy, oy ! '^ upon the startled midwinter air with- 
out any resentment arising in our hearts; for 
though we note the regular sAvell and vanishing 



204 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

of his voice for a couple of squares, as lie ap- 
proaches and then recedes, we picture what an 
uncomfortable time he must be having out there 
in the bitter blast, Avhile the rest of the world lies 
snug under warm coverlets with the daj^s work 
completed, and we conclude that if he endures 
it we can. We do not know if a deep, sonorous 
voice be held indispensable to such oystermen, 
but all we ever heard have advertised their bi- 
valves, not, like Mrs. Browning^s reading of Greek, 
^' somewhat low for ai's and oi^s,^^ but with a 
power and resonance that were surprising. We 
remember one such voice that haunted for years 
the streets of a certain old seaport town at night ; 
and it rings still in our memory with wonderful 
depth and fulness, fit to rival the notes of any 
basso prqfundo on operatic boards. 

It is the people who come shrieking along 
before daylight that receive tlie fiercest anathemas 
of awakened slumberers. When the venders of 
edibles and small wares and the repairers of 
household ntensils send up their unseasonable 
matins, we are roused from our last delightful 



OUR MINOR RIGHTS. 205 

nap to a realizing sense that the hungry, work- 
a-day world is at our doors again. We feel 
wronged that our repose should be thus lightly 
sacrificed, and make it an additional charge 
against the metropolitan police that it does not 
send all such itinerant venders packing. Who are 
they, that they should rob us of our rest Avith 
this hawking of superfluous wares, making for 
themselves a few cents betimes, and saving the 
payment of shop-rent, at the expense of the quiet 
and sleep of a whole town ? By their noisy brisk- 
ness we seem reproached for indolent repose, and 
urged to rise before our time and join the workers 
already astir. Even if the result were desirable, 
we should decidedly object to the means. We 
claim that to each man belongs the privilege of 
setting his own alarm-clock. 

The proper limits of individual freedom on 
sidewalks and highways need to be more explicitly 
defined. "Keep to the right in passing"*^ is almost 
the only maxim to regulate the hurrying throngs 
who push and nudge and jostle each other upon 
our busy thoroughfares ; and even this rule varies 



206 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

in difi'ereiit countries, so that in Canada we find 
both man and beast turning always to the left. 
Yet, as citizens, we have a conceded right to un- 
obstructed passage upon the public street ; and 
on crowded sidewalks the comfort of all demands 
that each one shall move at the average pace, and 
that nobody shall spread himself laterally, with 
arms akimbo, to the annoyance of his neighbors. 
The day of the long street-dress, we may hope, 
has forever gone by, and with it much provoca- 
tion to internal rage on the 2)art of unwary follow- 
ers ; but we still find men carrying pet canes 
under their arms, which project behind at a hori- 
zontal level, to the imminent risk of all eyes tliat 
approach within their sweep. Now and then en- 
thusiastic friends, encountering each other, come to 
a dead halt in the midst of this flowing tide of hu- 
manity, and leave the arrested currents in the rear 
to eddy around and pass on as best they may. 
A man is also infringing upon the rights of others 
wlien he smokes his cigar upon the public street, 
since he leaves behind him a train of nauseous 
fumes which those who follow are forced to 



I 



OUR 31 [NOR RIGHTS. 207 

breathe with disgust. Hereafter, when the com- 
fort of pedestrians shall be more fully respected, 
the law of public opinion, Avhen no written law 
exists, will forbid this practice on crowded tlior- 
oughfares, and also the vile habit of making the 
pavement beneath our feet unclean with tobacco- 
juice. No rules can be applied to passengers in 
a horse-car ; for when they enter that form of 
conveyance they manifestly surrender thereby all 
right to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happi- 
ness. 

If we buy a ticket to any entertainment, we 
understand that we buy with it a right to hear 
the lecturer or singer undisturbed; but there are 
always the people who come bustling in half an 
hour after the performance has begun, not look- 
ing abashed and mortified, as if they would crave 
forgiveness of the audience for thus violating their 
duty towards it, but sailing down with calm assur- 
ance to their seat in the central aisle, where they 
settle themselves with as much whirr and rustle as 
a flock of pigeons would make in alighting. And 
behind us are the groups of chattering girls, gen- 



208 BROWSING JJIOXa BOOKS. 

erally accompanied by one half-witted boy, whose 
presence has set his fair admirers into all this flut- 
ter and gigglement, which drowns effectually every 
delicate note from the stage. We cannot arrest 
such people, we cannot order them to start iti- 
stanier ; we have only to sit and hide our indigna- 
tion, like a smouldering volcano. 

Whatever regulation the common sense of man- 
kind regards as just becomes a recognized law, 
though it may have no support from the statute- 
books. Thus we are bound to keep an engage- 
ment punctually, and to apologize if it is not kept, 
because every man rates his time as too precious 
to be wasted by another; and the duties which 
rights imply lead us to tender cheerfully to others 
the punctilious observances which we claim for 
ourselves. 

Many of the annoyances of life spring merely 
from a lack of refinement and culture in the peo- 
ple about us. The woman who appears abroad in 
a scarlet dress and crimson shawl may cause us all 
to wish that such an offence against the sight were 
punishable by imprisonment for a term of days; 



OUR MINOR RIGHTS. 209 

but until her eye is trained to perceive the har- 
mony of colors, her more artistic neighbors will 
remain completely at her mercy. It ia not enough 
that men be well disposed : their perceptions and 
imaginations must be cultivated before they can 
readily apprehend the conditions of another^s 
happiness and the requirements of his life. Then, 
and then only, may we expect that these minor 
rights will be everywhere respected. The Golden 
Eule itself cannot insure a just and kindly treat- 
ment of others, unless they who practise it are 
sufficiently enlightened to desire for themselves 
whatever is noblest and best. 



14 



THE TRIALS OF VISITING. 



TDROBABLY no man imagines what a bundle 
of habits and weaknesses he is, what a 
craven slave to routine and creature comforts, 
until he starts off on a visit. At home, the sur- 
roundings which he has gradually moulded to his 
pleasure, the petty customs which his whims have 
instituted, seem so natural and unvarying that he 
never suspects them to be the outgrowth of pecu- 
liarities, or even of positive tastes. It takes but 
little, he fancies, to make him happy anywhere : 
were he at Eome, he would do astheEomans do; 
but when he gets there he finds it to be no easy mat- 
ter. Then the atmosphere of his own little world 
proves to be the only one which he can inhale with- 
out effort ; in any other he gasps for breath. 



THE TRIALS OF VISITING. 211 

We are never conscious of this peculiarity of 
our personal needs when we are sojourning at 
hotels. There, if the arrangements about us do 
not appear at first glance to our liking, the ring 
of a bell changes them all, and we quickly forget 
tliat they were ever different. But when we visit 
the house of a friend we enter the domain of an 
absolute ruler, whose regulations must be accepted 
without criticism or change. AVe are sure that 
the purpose of his heart is to render us supremely 
happy ; and as guests we feel in honor bound to 
appear so. What misery and secret suffering this 
duty imposes we all know too well, though it 
may be that we seldom confess it. 

It is only after the first evening has passed 
in happy greetings and social delight, the last good- 
night been carolled over the balusters, and we have 
retired to the solitude of our rooms, that we begin 
to realize the strangeness of our surroundings. 
Thoreau said that a farm-house in his town which 
he had never before visited was as strange and 
interesthig to him as the Kingdom of Dahomey ; 
and this chamber appears a Dahomey to us. As 



212 BROJrSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

we survey it, something akin to the dreary desola- 
tion which smote us the first time that we were 
left at school comes back once more ; but Ihen we 
mourned for bright smiles and kind words, tlie 
warmth and cheer which we had lost : now we are 
dismayed at the lack of mere material comforts. 
Years have made us sordid and practical; it is our 
own easy-chair, our own mattress and corpulent 
pillows, that memory invests at this hour with so 
rosy a charm. 

The unfamiliar aspect of all about us forebodes 
only breakers ahead. But we conclude to await de- 
velopments; and developments soon come. From 
the first the bed wore the suspicious look of a huge 
cushion ; and now our worst fears are realized. 
While its feathers surround us in puff'y billows, 
we try to recall all we have read of death by suffo- 
cation ; and then we wonder if Desdemona found 
it an easy one, — poor soul ! A sense of oppres- 
sion leads to further discoveries : we are walled in 
by cotton comforters ; and the shrunken pillows, 
set on end, still keep our head on a down-grade. 
This might be borne if fresh air were to be had ; 



THE TRIALS OF VISITING. 213 

but full, heavy curtains drape the windows to such 
a degree that the discouraged breeze makes no 
attempt to enter. The only way to lift the 
aforesaid curtains that suggests itself to our dis- 
ordered mind is to thrust jackknives through 
their folds and pinion them to the side wall ; but 
we are not quite desperate enough for that. To 
add to our discomfiture, a strong odor of gas steals 
u|)on us ; and just then we remember that there 
were no matches in sight ; so that, in any alarm 
of fire, we should probably perish from bewilder- 
ment. Altogether, the universe seems out of 
joint. 

Finally, — such is the endurance of the human 
frame, — we sink into slumber; and all night long 
we are buffeting, in our dreams, the billows of a 
heaving sea. But when we descend next morning, 
and a sweet-voiced friend asks in a complaisant 
tone, " How did you rest, my dear ? " can we be 
cruel enough to say, " Abominably ! I am just 
alive '^ ? That would relieve our feelings ; but, 
instead, we tell graceful lies, and assure our con- 
science that they are of the whitest. 



214 BROWSING JMONG BOOKS. 

Then arises anew within our heart the strong wish 
that sincerity in this world were possible. How 
it would simplify life^ — how much happier w^e 
should all be ! For instance^, in accepting this 
kind invitation^ if we could only have written : 
" My dear Cousin, — Your persuasions are quite 
irresistible! I hope to be with you on Tuesday. 
I sleep on hair mattresses, with woollen blankets ; 
shall desire an abundance of air, water, coarse tow- 
els, and by no means Castile soap. Does your gas- 
pipe leak ? How my heart bounds to meet you ! 
Yours devotedly.-" 

We are sure that if every housekeeper would 
at least make it a point to sleep in the guest-cham- 
ber once each season, these discomforts would, in a 
measure, be remedied. The beds w^ould not then 
be found uncomfortable, the furniture ill-arranged, 
the curtains unmanageable; the mirror w^ould no 
longer hang over the stove, or the lounge extend 
betw^een gusty windows. We resolve that nobody 
shall ever suffer the same at our kindly hands ; 
not foreseeing that hereafter this cousin shall come 
to sojourn in our own happy domicile, and shall 



THE TRIALS OF VISITING. 215 

then agonize on flat couches, and wonder if 
bed and board were meant to be synonymous 
terms. 

On awaking next morning it occurs to us that 
it would be sensible for private families to adver- 
tise to strangers within their gates the hours for 
meals, in plain sight upon the door-panels, after 
the manner of hotels. For we hear a bell tinkling 
below stairs ; and, having forgotten to inquire 
concerning the household regulations, we are in 
doubt whether it summons us to shake off dewy 
slumber or to betake ourselves into the presence 
of the coifee-urn. Always hoping for the best, we 
consult our convenience, and go at length down to 
find the mutton-chops cold, the griddle-cakes fast 
turning into leather, and the family grouped 
around the fire, awaiting our advent in smiling 
patience. 

During the day our friend's friends call upon 
us ; and we are civil to a degree, accept their 
little tea-parties, and are only too happy to be 
sacrificed in the cause. But these tea-parties 
threaten to be the death of us ; since every house- 



216 BROWSING J3I0NG BOOKS. 

keeper, for some occult reason, considers her honor 
at stake in giving to her guests the strongest tea it 
is possible to make ; and although we may suggest a 
change, it comes back as black as ever. We drink 
it knowing that every spoonful costs us half an hour 
of " nature^'s sweet restorer/^ Then we must taste 
all the Ctike, and never break it; and must listen 
patiently to recipes for its manufacture, if we have 
been indiscreet enough to pronounce it delicious ; 
though in five minutes we could not tell whether 
the yolks or the whites of the eggs are beaten for 
the frosting. 

After the days of pleasant converse, the calls and 
tea-fights lose their charm, we grow weary of 
being so persistently entertained, and fancy our- 
selves in a delightful jail, with loving friends for 
keepers. We miss our freedom; it irks us that 
our movements are all watched, even by the kind- 
liest eyes. Man may be a gregarious animal, but 
he must escape from the flock sometimes, to get a 
taste of silence and solitude. If, however, we retire 
behind closed doors to enjoy awhile the luxury of 
being alone, our friends suspect us of homesick- 



THE TRIJLS OF VISITING. 217 

iiessj and only redouble their attentions when we 
rejoin the family circle. 

The necessity of being always in the blandest 
humor is really a tax upon one of moderate capaci- 
ties. Some natures appear to be made up of sugar 
and sunshine, but they are few. It wears upon most 
people to be amiable day in and day out, to speak 
always in a company voice, to have no plans or 
desires beyond another^s pleasure ; and we feel 
hypocritical in donning a mask of such smiling 
serenity. 

In the evening, after remaining an hour beside 
the piano, where our little cousin has been pouring 
out in melodious strains her full repertory of 
familiar ballads, we catch sight of the evening 
paper, and would fahi seize it then ^nd there and 
make off to a sofa-corner, that we might ascertain 
if the official returns of the state election are yet 
in, how well Gladstone succeeds in carrying his 
last measure, and what wqw complications have 
arisen in the East. But though the music is not 
entrancing, and the interludes of conversation fail 
to engross our thought, we are aware that good 



218 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

manners compel us to keep resolutely to the enter- 
tainment provided. 

When^ finally, the days of our visit have come 
to an end, and we return to our own vine and fig- 
tree, what a comfortable spot it seems! We never 
suspected till now that a plain house on a back 
street could be like the Garden of Eden. Having 
set foot on the native heather of our hall-carpet, 
we are in harmony with the universe again. We 
are monarch of all we survey, and go up and down 
surveying, with hands in our pockets, and whis- 
tling " Home, Sweet Home.^' Howard Payne must 
have been on a visit before he wrote that. The 
match-boxes are just where they should be, the 
tongs lean in their accustomed place, and all secret 
springs of action in windows and window-shades 
lie revealed to our inner sight. 

If we must ever again depart from under our 
own roof-tree, it shall only be when we can take 
our ease in our iini. We enjoy the society of 
friends, and love them as well as ever ; but if we 
must martyr ourselves for their sakes, let it be at 
a dash, in one impetuous act, which sliall crown 






THE TRIALS OF VISITING. 219 



■US with heroism, — anything but agonizing throuo-h 
a series of psttj discomforts, of which we cannot 
complain, and to endure which brings us neither 
credit nor renown. 



AN EVEMNG^S ADYENTUEE AT THE 
DEACON HOUSE. 



TF you were one of tlie thousand curious visitors 
who were permitted to examine the wonders of 
the Deacon House, previous to the public sale of 
its furniture and contents a week ago, you must 
hnve noticed a picture that hung there in the 
library, above an old, richly carved cabinet, and 
wliich was set down in the catalogue as a Delilah, 
by Rubens. It represented the upturned face of 
a woman, so strikingly beautiful, with its Grecian 
outline and warm, clear coloring, that the most 
careless could not easily forget it. 

This picture had charmed a wealthy lady, who 
was admitted to a private view of the house before 
it was thrown open to the great crowd of ticket- 



DEACON HOUSE. 221 



holders ; but as she had then no reason to doubt 
that the painting was a veritable Rubens, and 
likely to command an immense price at the auc- 
tion, she indulged no hope of obtaining it for her- 
self. She resolved, however, upon procuring a 
copy, if this should be possible ; and being a 
personal friend of some of the heirs of the prop- 
erty, she readily gained permission for any artist 
whom she might select to visit the house at all 
hours previous to the first day of the sale. 

The artist chosen was none other than my inti- 
mate friend Jeannette, who had spent considerable 
time at copying, in the Louvre and other galleries, 
while pursuing her art education abroad, and 
whose skill in such painting had begun to attract 
attention from connoisseurs. She liked the task 
that was given her, and set immediately about it ; 
but owing to the constant throngs of sight-seers 
that filled the rooms day after day, she Avas re- 
stricted to a few hours of the early morning and 
one of the late afternoon for her work. She be- 
came ambitious to produce an exact and finished 
copy ; and the last afternoon preceding the sale 



BROWSING J310NG BOOKS. 



found her with some hours^ labor yet to be addc d 
before she could regard the picture as complete. 

On the morning of that day she came to me to 
ask if I would be willing to remain with her at 
the house from four o^clock^ when the crowd 
would be gone, until such time in the early even- 
ing as lier work would permit her to leave, ^'\yiiig 
that her brother, who had intended to keep her 
company there, was but just now obliged to leave 
town unexpectedly, and she must rely upon me. 
I readily consented, glad of so pleasant an oppor- 
tunity to study at my leisure the many rare objects 
of interest that I had seen there on a hurried visit 
the previous day. 

Iler plans, as she informed me, were already 
made. The doorkeeper in charge, who was di- 
rected to afford her every assistance in his power-, 
liad allowed her to make wliat arrangement she 
chose; and to avoid the trouble and responsibility 
of keeping and delivering up the keys of the liall- 
door and the great gate, we were to find egress 
through the rear entrance of the house, where a 
door opened upon a court, and was fastened only 



BEACON HOUSE. 223 

bj a spring-lock. There, as she had arranged, a 
carriage was to come for us at a certain hour, and 
wait until we should appear with the finished 
painting. As tlie daylight would soon leave that 
eastern room where she must work, a supply of 
candles was to furnish light when needed; and 
these were to be set in the chandelier, made for 
such means of illumination, and which hung, for- 
tunately, so as to throw a strong, full light upon 
the picture. This friend Jeannette is an energetic 
little body, and forgets nothing ; for in all the 
journeys and labors into which her art-studies 
have led her, she has been used to looking out for 
herself. 

By means of the pass provided, I obtained ad- 
mission to the house at the appointed hour, and 
found my friend already in the library, making 
ready with brushes and palette, and impatient for 
the people to be gone. She had not long to wait. 
The stately policemen, who had stood on guard all 
day in the different rooms, soon cleared them of 
their occupants, and then departed themselves; the 
auctioneer's clerks, who had been verifying their 



224 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

lists for the next daj^s sale^ went their ways ; and, 
finally, the trusty doorkeeper, after seeing that all 
windows were secure, came to announce that he 
was ready to go, and tliat he should now deliver 
tlie house into our care, charging us to see that the 
door opening upon the court was firmly closed 
whenever we should leave. We went down to it, 
to make sure that it was all right ; and when we 
saw the keeper depart, locking the hall-door be- 
hind him, and swinging the gates together and 
fastening them with a great noise, we rejoiced that 
we had at length the house to ourselves. 

We thought best, however, to make a hurried 
tour of the rooms, to see that nobody had been left 
behind, and that everything was as it should be, 
before we settled down to the evening's work. So, 
gliding up the broad oaken staircase, past the white 
marble vase on the landing, and the great square of 
Gobelin tapestry stretched upon the high wall, we 
reached the gallery above, and then traversed the 
empty chambers, peering hastily, as we went, behind 
the damask curtains that shrouded the beds, and into 
all corners and closets, after the maimer of women 



BEACON HOUSE. 225 



when out upon such exploring expeditions. Then, 
descending, we glanced through open doors into the 
grand cordon of gorgeous apartments that consti- 
tuted the ground floor, thronged a few moments 
ago with bustling crowds, but now as orderly, as 
silent and deserted, as if nothing had occurred 
during the past week to disturb the hush and gloom 
that liad reigned there for twenty long years. 

Once more in the library, I busied myself with 
looping back the heavy velvet curtains from the 
windows, that no ray of light might be lost; while 
my companion seated herself at her easel, before 
the glorious Delilah, and was soon absorbed in 
her work. The face and shoulders of her copy were 
already finished, and wonderfully like, but the 
drapery was still only in outline. Not to disturb 
her, I proceeded quietly to examine the contents of 
our room. It was not an attractive apartment. 
You remember the dull, dark paper, the dingy 
green velvet draperies, the demoralized steel chan- 
delier. The great picture of the ascending arch- 
angel, beside the carved fire-frame, was not cheerful 
to contemplate; neither was a large and very un- 
15 



226 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

pleasant-looking soup-plate^ fastened to the wall^ 
said to be of majolica, and attributed,, from some 
old spite perhaps, to Caffagido. Several ancient 
breastplates and shields, girt about with divers 
diabolical weapons, appeared above the bookcases, 
beyond my reach. To inspect the mineral-case was 
to stand in Jeannette^s precious light ; and some 
magnificent wood-carving, which I remembered as 
adorning the panels of a cabinet, and a number of 
curious old miniatures, were all placed directly 
under the Eubens picture, and therefore too near 
the artist to admit of close examination. 

I resolved to extend my observations to the 
other rooms, particularly as I wished to study the 
Sevres china, about which I had been informing 
myself since my first visit. After setting up the 
candles in the shaky chandelier, preparatory to a 
grand illumination when their light should be 
needed, I informed my friend that I was just start- 
ing out on a tour of observation and discovery 
through the lower rooms. 

" Perhaps,^^ I added, " I may come across a 
comfortable-looking sofa on the way, and con- 



BEACON HOUSE. 227 



elude to take a little nap on mj own account ; so 
don^t mind if I fail to put in an appearance for 
the next hour. I shall be here in a twinklings 
whenever you want me. Just whistle and 1^11 
come unto you_, my love ; '' and, laughing, I de- 
parted, closing the door behind me, but going 
back to tell Jeannette to be sure to draw the thick 
curtains well together, and to slmt both doors 
tightly, if she should touch off the candles before 
my return, otherwise the unusual light in the 
deserted mansion miglit alarm the outer world. 
Promising, on my part, not to go beyond call, and 
on no account to stray off into the chambers above, 
I left her painting in the folds of Delilah's mantle 
as if minutes were never so precious. 

I found myself, then, in the saloii, which was 
curtained with yellow damask. Although the sun 
must have already set, the great parlors before me, 
stretched one beyond another in a gorgeous vista, 
were bright with numberless reflections from mir- 
rors and candelabras, gilded panels, sheeny satins, 
and lustrous chandeliers. These rooms, which in 
the garish daylight, when filled with a jostling 



228 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

crowds had seemed to me furnished with nothing 
but splendid trumpery, appeared now, in their 
gathering shadows and soft, gleamy lights, truly 
palatial and superb. Their loneliness and silence 
were painfully impressive. No sound from the 
distant street penetrated their seclusion, for the 
house was built within a wide enclosure, and this 
was surrounded by a solid wall of brick ; no steps 
echoed near me as I moved, for thick carpets muf- 
fled every somid; no ticking of a clock was heard, 
for every one standing on the glittering mantels 
had kept its hands fixed in the same spot for many 
a long year. 

I halted a moment before the great Fragonard 
paintings set in the wall, to admire again those 
robustious young cherubs tumbling about in mid- 
air irrespective of all laws of gravity, and then 
stepped, not without a certain reverence, into the 
little boudoir where were gathered together the 
furniture and ornaments that had once belonged 
to a beautiful and ill-fated queen. In such a place 
and at such an hour I could not but indulge in a 
bit of quiet revery. In these very chairs Marie 



DEACON HOUSE. 229 



Antoinette had sat^ on these curtains of embroi- 
dered damask her hand had rested as she drew 
them back to gaze from her palace windows^ and 
on this scarlet satin lounge she may have lain for 
a noontide siesta^ after her charming peasant-play 
at Little Trianon. This exquisite jewel-box may 
have held the veritable diamond necklace over 
which she had cause to shed so many tears. Her 
husband^s sister^ the Princess Elizabeth, looked 
down from a medallion on the wall; and the Prin- 
cess Lamballe seemed smiling straight into my 
eyes from under her rakish little hat. Certainly 
all three had bent some day over this centre-table 
to admire its inlaid Sevres ; and no doubt they 
studied with interest the portraits of themselves 
fixed in the backs of these tiny chairs. I gazed 
with delight at a painting of frolicsome cherubs 
balancing on a tree-bole, which hung over the 
door; and nearly dislocated my neck to inspect 
several others of the same race waltzing on the 
ceiling around the rod of a chandelier, whose 
graceful basket of golden lilies depended between 
a cloud of pinioned butterflies. What a pity. 



230 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

thought I, that all the dainty furnishings of this 
pretty boudoir, after having been kept together 
for so many years, in fact ever since they were 
owned by the daughter of Maria Theresa, eighty 
odd years ago, must be scattered to-morrow 
to the four winds, under the hammer of an auc- 
tioneer! 

I stepped out at length into the Montmorenci 
salon, all a-glitter with green and gold, and hurried 
across to the dining-room, to inspect the famous 
dishes there before it should be too dark to behold 
them well. The great paintings that covered the 
walls were fast sinking into gloom. Making my 
way to the case of marvellous china, which had been 
presented to the French queen as the gift of a 
city, I removed the glass frame that protected it, 
and lifting each cup from its niche in the satin case, 
examined at my leisure the exquisite paintings. 
Then I surveyed the Sevres plates, with the portrait 
of a court beauty in the centre, the finger-bowls and 
wine-glasses of pale Bohemian that stood in the 
curious sideboard, and all the odd little tea-sets 
and ungainly dishes ranged around in the cases. 



BEACON HOUSE. 231 



These plates and cups of fragile china had out- 
lived the emperors and queens who had eaten and 
drunk from them at forgotten banquets, and even a 
generation or two of American republicans, after 
their time. 

It was now so dark that I felt oblicred to aban- 

o 

don further explorations and to put all things in 
order again. But I found it impossible to replace 
the heavy glass frame over the Sevres service, so 
I left it on the floor till Jeannette could come 
to help me. Other and more mysterious hands, 
however, were destined to restore it to its j)roper 
place. 

No sound had come from the library since I 
left it. Jeannette must be getting along famously, 
I thought ; it was best not to disturb her. Com- 
ing back into the Montmorenci parlor, and re- 
marking again what an eye that family had for 
splendor and gilding, I concluded to while away 
the time by taking a nap. So I brought two 
pieces of rich costuming from a number lyhig 
upon the billiard-table in the next room, that 
they might serve me as protection from the grow- 



232 BROWSING JMONG BOOKS. 

ing chilliness of the aii% and made myself com- 
fortable upon one of the green satin sofas that stood 
in a corner just opposite the door of the little 
boudoir. Truly, I muttered to myself, this is not 
bad. Ensconced in the salon of the Montmorencis, 
in sight of a queen's boudoir, with one of King 
Louis's waistcoats and the mantle of a Spanish 
grandee for wrappings, I may content myself for 
a while. Musing upon the days when these rooms 
were crowded with guests, the liglits all ablaze, 
the windows open into a bower of blossoming 
plants, gentlemen clinking their wine-glasses and 
ladies fluttering their fans, I fell at length soundly 
asleep. 

How long I remained there, I do not know ; 
but when I awoke, it seemed to be from deep 
slumber, and everything around me stood en- 
veloped in the gloom of night. It was not too 
dark, however, for me to see across the room where 
I lay, and dimly to discern the other apartments 
beyond. A wind had arisen since I slept; for 
there came to my ear a sound from without like 
the swaying of tree-boughs ; and now and then a 



BEACON HOUSE. 233 



titful light stole into the window,, flasliing for an 
instant across the gilded panels, and gleaming 
from the hundred crystal pendants of a great 
chandelier. Then all grew dark as before. I 
knew that the moon was np, and struggling 
through a driving rack of clouds ; though from 
where I lay I could see neither moon nor sky. 
The profound hush about me was only intensified 
by the sound of the wind and the steady dripping 
of the snow upon tlie conservatory roof. 

I comprehended at once that I had overslept 
myself; and that my friend must, by this time, 
have finished her work and be ready to depart. 
But not a sound or a ray of light came through 
that distant library door. I was rising to make 
my way towards it, when a continuous noise 
arrested my attention, as regular as the snow- 
dropping, but much finer and nearer. I listened; 
it certainly was the ticking of a clock in this very 
room. A streak of moonlight that fell just then 
across the wall showed me the gilded hands of the 
mantel-clock in actual motion. This was so 
strange that I closed my eyes quickly and then 



234 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

opened them wide, to convince myself that I was 
awake. 

Soon the room was in shadow again, deeper than 
before, and the dial no longer visible; but the 
ticking continued. Rising on my elbow, I was 
proceeding to gather up the mantle which had 
fallen to the carpet, when I became conscious that 
in the boudoir opposite, behind the narrow, half- 
curtained doorway, a fanit light was shining, — a 
light steadier than the moonlight and not so pale. 
No lamp was to be seen there ; but, keeping silent 
and motionless, — for by this time I was lost in 
wonder at what all this could mean, — I was sure 
I heard a soft rustling, and then a noise like the 
opening of a box-lid or of a cabinet-door. Of 
course, I reflected, it can only be Jeannette, who 
has come in there with a candle, and is standing 
intent upon something beside the door. I called 
her name. Instead of a reply there was an in- 
stant hush. I strained my ears, but could hear 
nothing except tlie tick, tick of tlie clock, and the 
fancied echoes of my own voice dying away in the 
farthest rooms. For some moments this breathless 



DEACON HOUSE. 235 



hash continued. Now, if my friend be playing me 
a trick I may as well discover it at once, thouglit 
I, making bold to advance toward the boudoir and 
learn for myself who this unseen occupant might 
be. But scarcely had I risen when the same 
sharp click struck upon my ear, as though a small 
door had been shut ; and then the rustling began 
again. I held my breath in a wondering fear. 
Through the arch of the little curtained doorway, 
I could see the mantel-mirror that hung opposite ; 
and into its depths there moved the reflection of 
something like an antique lamp, burning at the tip 
and held high by a white hand. A portion of the 
sleeve was visible at the wrist. This was no Jean- 
nette: who else could be there? I sank back 
upon the sofa, incapable of any motion or thought 
save this, — that some other being besides ourselves 
was shut up in this dark, deserted mansion. 

From a hidden corner near the doorway there 
now glided forth into tlie centre of the boudoir the 
figure of a woman, tall, and dressed in ancient 
fashion, with a rich, flowered brocade SAveeping the 
floor and rustling as she went. Her face was not 



236 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

visible^ for she was moving away from me towards 
the mantel ; and the tiny lamp glimmering above 
her head seemed to throw her figure beneath into 
soft shadow_, whilst it cast a faint light around. 
She paused, as if surveying the two portraits on 
the wall before her ; and then, while I was trem- 
bhng lest some involuntary movement of mine 
should attract her attention, she passed suddenly 
out of sight, through a door communicating with 
another salon beyond. I watched intently for her 
reappearance ; but she remained there a long while, 
without my being able to detect the slightest sound 
or flicker of light in the adjoining rooms. 

The entrance-hall, containing the great staircase, 
occupied a remote corner of the house; and be- 
tween it and the parlor, into which this being or 
vision had departed, stretched the billiard-room, 
which had been dim even at twilight, with its 
closed blinds ; and now that no ray of the moon 
penetrated the other apartments, it was wrapped 
in darkness. While I was staring into its depths, 
and debating if I had not better attempt to 
pick my way through it and escape to the library, 



DEACON HOUSE. 237 



the figure crossed mj sight again^ moving along 
the farthest side of the billiard-room in the direc- 
tion of the hall. Her face^ as I beheld it dimly 
in profile^ — for the lamj3 was well-nigh extin- 
guished, — shone pale and sad, and she looked 
straight before her as she walked; but just as 
she was passing from view, her eyes were turned full 
upon me, and then, raising her hand, she made a 
sweeping gesture toward the door. In an instant 
she had vanished ; and the rustling sound seemed 
to die away upon the staircase. When it had 
wholly ceased, I flew to the room where, hours ago, 
I had left my friend. 

And there I found the busy little maid, in the 
soft light of a dozen candles, wiping her brushes, 
and pointing triumphantly to her finished paint- 
ing. She started at seeing the expression on my 
face, but soon burst into merry laughter; and 
before I could find breatli to explain myself, 
dragged me in front of a mirror that I might 
behold the strange rig in which I was arrayed. 
An old-fashioned waistcoat, bespangled with silken 
pansies, into which I had thrust my arms before 



238 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

taking the nap and which I had since forgotten, was 
buttoned well up to the chin ; and a high collar, 
stiff with embroidery, was standing about my ears 
and threatening to engulf the chignon behind. 
Above this appeared a pallid face and eyes set 
wide. I had to smile in spite of the untold VA^on- 
der I had seen ; and, indeed, the brightly lighted 
room, the sight of Jeannette, and the sound of her 
merry voice, were wonderfully reassuring after my 
lonesome experience. 

I first asked her if it were not nearly midnight; 
and she assured me that it was by no means so late 
as that, adding that it was plain I had been mas- 
querading with ghosts out there, and had lost my 
wits. With some effort I related all I had seen. 
She only laughed the more, asserting that I had 
been half asleep, and that this strange being, who- 
ever she might be, was only a creature of my im- 
agining. 

" Were you not conjuring up all kinds of fan- 
cies before you fell asleep ? " she asked. 

" Perhaps so,^"* I rejoined ; " but this was no 
dream, I am sure.''^ 



BEACON HOUSE. 239 



"But I have been awake all tlie while, and have 
heard nothing. I remember that my door opened 
suddenly in the early evening, without apparent 
cause; and I got up and looked out, but dis- 
covered only yourself fast asleep on a distant sofa. 
I closed it and returned to my work ; but a mo- 
ment after it opened wider than before. Then I 
concluded that a window was left open somewhere 
in the house, and that the wind, rising, had blown 
the door back. I shut it again, and thought no 
more about it. If your wandering, ladylike ghost 
came to look in upon me, I did not see her ; and 
this house is not one of the kind to be haunted, 
for it has scarcely ever been inhabited by living 
people. But come,^"* she added, " the carriage must 
have been waiting for us a long while. Put this 
out of your mind, and let us make ready to go." 

I recollected the glass frame belonging over the 
Sevres china, which I had left on the dining-room 
floor, and knew it must be replaced. Looking 
out, we saw that the rooms were now bright with 
moonlight, and together we started upon this 
errand. As we went bv the clock in the Montmo- 



240 BROWSING AMONG BOOKS. 

renci salon, its hands were still in motion. On 
reaching the dining-room,, the frame, which we 
had come to lift, appeared set in its proper place. 
I looked at my friend, and saw that she was begin- 
ning to share my amazement, but we said nothing. 
Passing near the hall-door on our return, I could 
not refrain from glancing up to the Gobelin tap- 
estry that hung over the staircase ; for it was 
lighted then by the fall moon that shone through 
an unseen window on the gallery above. The 
central figure of Victory looked out, regal and 
smiling ; but as we paused a moment to behold it, a 
shadow, like that of a woman, fell upon the broad 
picture, wavering and floating across from one side 
to the other, and then vanishing. Neither of us 
spoke a word as we returned to the library; but to 
take up the painting-case and canvas, extinguish 
and remove the candles, loop back the curtains, 
and depart to the flight of stairs leading down to 
the rear entrance, was the work of a few mo- 
ments. 

Through the side-lights we saw the carriage 
waiting ; and there was our faithful Jehu, with his 



DEACON HOm'E. 241 



blanketed horses drawn up to the door, and himself 
sitting motionless upon his box and half asleep in 
the shadow of the great house. Soon the outer 
door was closed tightly behind us, and we were 
whirling around the square into the lighted street. 
I glanced back at the mansion we had left ; but 
the moon, freed from her clouds^ was flooding its 
front with a peaceful light ; and if any unearthly 
visitants were roaming then through the deserted 
chambers, no signs of disturbance appeared at 
their casements. The breeze had died away ; and 



withhi the garden- wall the black shadows of leaf- 
less trees stretched motionless across the untrod- 
den snow. 

We spoke on the way home of what we had 
seen, and agreed to say nothing about it to others 
until we had taken time to think it over and 
account for it to ourselves, if that should prove 
possible. This is the first time I have related it to 
any one ; but, though a week has passed, it appears 
to me as strange, as inexplicable, as ever. 



16 



242 BROifSING A3I0NG BOOKS. 

Such is the story that was told me last night as 
I sat witli a friend by the light of her evenhig 
fire, listening to the " keening '' of the wind with- 
out. I give it, with all its minuteness, in her 
very words. Do I vouch, myself, for its truth ? 
Not at all. I do not believe in ghosts or haunted 
houses, — the morels the pity, — but while looking 
into her eyes and witnessing tlie emotion with 
which she recalled that evening^s adventure, I 
could not doubt the reality of what slie told. 
When she had closed, we sat a moment in thought. 
I asked her, at length, if the figure she had 
seen could not have been one of the old servants 
who had resided in the basement for many years, 
taking charge of the house during the prolonged 
absence of its owners. These women had but 
lately left it; and they might have returned to 
recover some forgotten article through a door un- 
known to others. She replied that it was no ser- 
vant, she was certain of that. 

" And you and your companion could not have 
imagined what you saw ? " 

" Impossible." 



DEACON HOUSE. 



243 



" Then, surely, you believe in ghosts ? '' 

" No ; I cannot admit that I do/' 

'' But you are aware that one or the other of 
these suppositions must be true ? "' 

"Well, it may be; but you shall choose for 
yourself." 




University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 
















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